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TO 

FANNY BAKER AMES 

THE FRIEND WHOSE POWER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE HAS BEEN NO LESS 

DISTINCT THAN HER PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE BEST 

THINGS IN THE HOME, AND WHOSE LIFE AT 

ALL POINTS MEANS BETTER THINGS 

FOR ALL WOMEN 



HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS 

A COURSE OF LECTURES IN THE SCHOOL OF 

ECONOMICS OF THE UNIVERSITY 

OF WISCONSIN 




HELEN CAMPBELL 



Author of " Prisoners of Poverty," "Women Wage-Earners," 
"American Girls' Home-Book," etc. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 

27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 

%\t luwlurbotker °§xm 
1897 



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Copyright, 1896 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



Ube mnfcftcrbecfcetr ipress, mew lorfe 




CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION 



PAGE 

vii 



CHAPTER I. 

THE STATICS AND DYNAMICS OF HOUSEHOLD 
ECONOMY . . 

The Relation of Household Economics to Life — The 
Evolution of the Family — Structural and Functional 
Organization of the Household ; the Essentials of Each 
and their Interdependence. Arts, Crafts, and Sciences 
Involved — The Low Popular Opinion of Household 
Economics, its Cause and Effect — Personality and 
Generalization — Savage and Child to Scientist — Evolu- 
tion of Household Economics — Division of Labor on 
Sex Lines and the Biological Reason for this Division 
— Ascent of Man Economically. 

CHAPTER II. 



THE HOUSE 

What is a House ? — Relation of House to Human Life 
— Value of Human Production in Proportion to Du- 
rability and Usability — Organic Structure of the House 
with its Evolution — The Kitchen and Derivatives — 
Bedroom and Derivatives — Parlor and Derivatives — 
Relation of Differentiation and Specialization in Build- 



20 



vi Contents. 

PAGE 

ing to the Same Processes in Social Evolution — Hut 
to Hotel ; Tent to Tenement — The Typical Farin-House 
— Industries Represented — The Rudimentary Shop — 
Effect of Habitat — Soil, Location, Foundation, Eleva- 
tion — Topographical Maps — From Isolation to Aggre- 
gation — The City Beautiful. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE BUILDING OF THE HOUSE 40 

The Place of Architecture in Household Economics — 
Relation to other Arts — Primitive Architecture and its 
Development : Domestic, Civic, and Ecclesiastic — 
The City and the King — Ancient Architecture, Public 
and Private — Herculaneum and Pompeii — Character of 
Oriental Home — Effect of House on its Occupants — 
The House and the Family — Confusion of Domestic 
with Industrial Architecture — Rooms and their Rela- 
tion — Existing Conditions of Domestic Architecture in 
Europe and America— Built to Live in and Built to Sell 
— Limitation of the Private Home— Gridiron Topog- 
raphy — Need of Combination and Juxtaposition — Es- 
sentiality of the Separate Home— Our Present Trend. 

CHAPTER IV. 

ORGANISM OP THE HOUSE 60 

Structural Necessities — Vital Processes of the House — 
Air, Light, Heat, Water, Ventilation — Troglodytes, 
Ancient and Modern — Proportion of Air to Occupancy 
— Air and Women— Air and Boys — " Night Air " — Ven- 
tilation, Public and Private— Our Schools — Light ; its 
Influence on the Body and Spirit — Sun-baths — The 
Artificial Light Habit — Heat, Natural and Artificial — 
Methods of Application — Plumbing — Water, Clean and 
Unclean — Drainage, Private and Public ; its Evolution, 
History, Present Methods, and Tendencies. 



Contents. vii 

CHAPTER V. 

PAGE 

DECORATION . . . . . . .86 

Use and Value of Decoration in Nature and Art ; its 
Laws and Principles — Relation to Pictorial Art — Evo- 
lution and History — Special Development in Races — 
Associate Conditions in Cause and Effect — Racial In- 
fluences — Periods — Our Present Level ; the Highest, 
the Lowest, the Average— Masculine and Feminine 
Decoration — " How to Make Home Beautiful " — The 
Sense of Beauty in Women — " Traces of a Woman's 
Hand" — Survivals of Savagery — " Home -Made," 
" Ready-Made," " Born and Not Made "—The Power 
of the Home-Maker — Educational and Moral Value of 
Truth in Art — Artistic Sins and their Moral Counter- 
parts — Homes, Schools, and Prisons — Practical Possi- 
bilities — " Often in a Wooden House a Golden Room 
You Find " — Spiritual Laws in Color— A Rest Room — 
National Importance of Elevation in Art. 

CHAPTER VI. 

FURNISHING IO7 

Organic Relation of Furniture to Humanity — Man 
Manufactures Extensions of his Body while the 
Animals Grow Them — Laws of Construction — Use 
and Beauty — Practical Conditions — Destructibility — 
Relative Value of Materials : Mineral, Vegetable, and 
Animal — Limitations of Applied Beauty — Essential 
Principles — Use — Ease and Economy — Evolution of 
House Furniture : the Seat, the Couch, the Table, the 
Cupboard, the Vessel— Vessel, Utensil, Tool — History, 
Distribution, Present Status — Relation to Class, In- 
dustry, Wealth, Sex, Age — Children's Furniture — Car- 
pets, Rugs, and Cushions — Upholstery — Specialization 
and Personality in Furniture — Mobility as a Factor in 
Evolution— Ideals. 



vili Conte7tts. 

CHAPTER VII. 

PAGE 

HOUSEHOLD INDUSTRIES 1 27 

Structure and Function — Functional Development of 
Society and Domestic Industries — Order of Appearance 
of Domestic Industries and Progress toward Higher 
Specialization — Relation of Work to Worker — Effect 
of Special Industries on Body and Mind — Exercise 
more Important than Environment ; Action than Re- 
action — The Division of Labor — Sex in Industry — Dis- 
tinction one of Degree, not of Kind — Jane-of-all-Trades 
— Arrested Development and Suppressed Specializa- 
tion — Effect of Racial Growth — Present Condition of 
Domestic Industries in Relation to Social Economy 
and Personal Development — The Two Remaining 
Functions, Nutritive and Excretory. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE NUTRITION OF THE HOUSEHOLD . .148 

Nutritive Function of the Household in Relation to 
the Individual ; in Relation to Society — Processes of 
Nutrition in Organ ; Organism and Organization — Im- 
portance of Nutrition to Life and of its Secondary Proc- 
esses to Development — The Struggle for Existence — 
Man's Victor}- — No Longer a Struggle but a Growth — 
Household Nutrition Merely a Stage in the Process — 
The Kitchen, the Stomach of the House — Primitive 
Nutrition Simple and Private — Increase of Complexity 
and Co-ordination — From Bone to Banquet — Physio- 
logical Needs — Waste and Supply — Age and Occupa- 
tion — Racial Dietetics — Theories and Facts — Some of 
Our Errors— Control of Nutrition and its Consequences. 

CHAPTER IX. 

FOOD AND ITS PREPARATION . . , . 1 67 

Chemical Properties of Foods — Animal and Vegetable 
Foods ; Mineral Constituents — Nutritive Values — Our 



Contents. ix 

PAGS 

Food Supply "From the Ground Up" — Preparatory 
Processes, General and Special — Diets — Vegetarianism 
— The Cooking Animal — Cooking as an Art, a Science, 
a Handicraft, a Profession— Apparatus and Methods ; 
Primitive, Ancient, Modern, Local — Our Advance 
in this Art as Compared with Others — Dietaries for 
Infancy, Childhood, Youth, Maturity, Age, and for 
the Sick — Markets and Marketing — Adulteration — 
Supervision of Foods — Civilized Living. 

CHAPTER X. 

CLEANING AND ITS PROCESSES . . . . 1 88 

Cleaning the Essential and Permanent Household 
Industry — The Excretory System of the Household 
Organism— Friction, Exposure, and Decay — Essential 
and Necessary Waste — The Grave and the Garret — 
Fuel and Flies — The Dirt we Make— Cleaning, Me- 
chanical and Chemical — Primitive Household without 
Excretory System — Semi- Annual Attacks on Dirt — 
Elements of Cleaning Processes ; Sweeping, Dusting, 
and Washing — Development and Excesses — The New 
England Housewife and her Dutch Prototype — Fluff 
— Dust and its Dangers — Bacteria and Microbes — Anti- 
septic Cleaning — Light and Cleanliness, Physical, 
Mental, and Moral — What it is to be Clean, and the 
Results. 

CHAPTER XI. 

HOUSEHOLD SERVICE 209 

The Servant Question — Total Inadequacy of Existing 
Treatment — Failure to Grasp Essential Distinction be- 
tween Service and Labor— Service a Condition Peculiar 
to Humanity — Philosophy of Service — Division of 
Labor and Co-ordination — Primitive Co-ordination 
Compulsory — The Army of Xerxes as Illustration of 



x Contents. 

PAGE] 

its Inferiority— Evolution of Service — Effect of Service 
on Character — Status of Domestic Service in Social 
Economy — Present Condition — Some Secondary Con- 
ditions of Domestic Service — The Stranger within our 
Gates — Reports of Bureaus of Labor — Philadelphia 
Special Inquiry in this Connection — Syracuse, N. Y. 
and its Work — Household Employees in Australia — 
The Training School and its Results — Matters of Life 
and Death — Diploma and License — Servant, Employee, 
Artist, and Professor. 

CHAPTER XII. 

ORGANIZED LIVING . . . . . .229 

Law of Organization in Individual and Species — 
Organic Evolution, Racial, National, Civic, Domestic 
— Primitive Conditions of Household Economy — The 
"Woman's World and the Man's — How to " Keep the 
Boys at Home " — Survivals and Rudiments — Effects on 
the Brain — Strain of Contending Eras — Relation to 
Progress — Home Influence, The Matrix of Civilization 
— How We Really Live—Flat, Club, Hotel, and Board- 
ing-House — Reaction and Compromise — Lines of De- 
velopment — Scientific Prophecy — Asa Gray and his 
Unknown Butterfly — Our Possibilities — The Higher 
Education and the Higher Life. 

APPENDIX -. 249 

INDEX ......... 279 




fc-^flu. 



INTRODUCTION. 



IF the title of the present volume read ' ' Household 
Economies," it might be received with more favor, 
economies being the housewife's usual conception 
of economics. 

Yet economics it is, its prefix a wonder and a ques- 
tion ; to the Greek foolishness, to the Jew a stum- 
bling block, to political economists a misnomer. It is 
hoped that the present word will show clearly not 
only the reason of its adoption, but the absolute neces- 
sity for holding strenuously to it, as the keynote to 
the new movement. 

For women and their thought about it what shall we 
say ? From that day in which all industries and arts 
were in her hand, one by one they have slipped away. 
Of the ten noted by Professor O. K. Mason in his 
notable little book, Woman's Share in Primitive Cul- 
ture, in the conclusions of which he had already been 
seconded by Taylor, Lubbock, and other anthropolo- 
gists, all but two have passed into the hands of men. 
These two, cooking and cleaning, save when men oc- 
casionally engage in them, remain in nearly as inco- 
herent primitiveness as in that remote day in which 
she — mother and conserver of the race — first demon- 
strated her power to handle them. 

How has the change come and why ? The answer 



XI 



xii Introduction, 

is plain. Habit, tradition, conservatism, all forces 
that make for the conservation of the race, have united 
in one enormous, all-comprehending inertia. The 
sense of duty, the compulsion of old forms, the iron | 
limits of the past interpretation of woman's sphere — ] 
all this and more has made the mind of woman on this 
side inaccessible. Man saw a better way, used and 
perfected it. Woman saw only the day's work. Atro- 
phy had set in and remains, and it is this atrophy we 
encounter in seeking to put the science of household 
economics on a level with the A B C of the sciences. 
That it is something reducible to forms, and to be 
studied as science — not as a series of duties, vague, 
indefinable, all-pervading and encompassing, summing 
up at last like the Scotchman's creed: ''You'll be 
damned if you do, you'll be damned if you don't, " — 
only a few here and there have admitted. 

So it is that the work has gone on. The " sanctity 
of the home ' ' has centred chiefly about the kitchen 
stove ; the boys have fled from it with a speed that 
does credit to their intelligence, nor can they by any 
present means be lured back again. This and a 
thousand other things have resulted from the system 
to which women cling, clamoring objections at any 
attempt to set their feet on more solid ground. Not 
till the ' ' domestic service ' ' question became so des- 
perate a complication that wise women opened their 
eyes and foolish ones protested louder than ever did 
the real nature of the problem begin to dawn. 

On every side of woman's life save this has been an 
advance marvellous in its nature, full of high promise 
for the future of mankind. And on this at last there 
are tokens of life. A gasp, a little shudder and quiver, 
in that body we know amiably as "the eternal 



Introduction. xiii 

womanly," but is there anything so tangible as a 
"movement" for women, much less for universities, 
and if so, how may its existence be demonstrated ? 
This will be answered farther on, the opening chapter 
defining its status or the want of it and the popular 
attitude toward it ; all this constituting the first three 
divisions of the subject and bringing us to the fourth, 
the university movement, its statistics, trend, and pos- 
sibilities. 

The college-bred woman, a product not much more 
than a generation old, numbers now for this country 
about three thousand. As pioneer in the new field, 
she has found both rewards and penalties, but as a 
whole has gone her way with enlarged view of life, 
and a capacity for practical thought and action which 
it has sometimes been affirmed the college-bred man 
does not possess. She has shared the fate of most 
students in having her mental processes a little encum- 
bered and hampered by bookishness. Added to this 
she has borne the additional burden not only of tradi- 
tion and custom, but of the weighty discourses of 
eminent men, who while volubly announcing their 
views as to her brain, her moral and physical status, 
how she would marry and whether she would marry 
at all, her voting or not voting, etc., etc., have not ex- 
pounded their thought as to ' ' that centre and source 
of political economy, the kitchen," with the home at 
large and the appurtenances thereof, the servant ques- 
tion and her relation to it, and all the depending facts 
and theories. 

Naturally a large percentage of these women in the 
beginning chose literary and scholastic forms of ac- 
tivity, but the remainder have gradually discovered 
that a work lay before them including every art and 



xiv Introduction. 

science still marked on the map of the past and of 
to-day "unknown." The American mechanic, they 
had learned, owed his position as leader of the world 
to the fact of " his readiness to change old ways for 
new and better devices. ' ' Had not the time then come 
for the American housewife to follow in his steps ? 

With the feeling out in these lines came the knowl- 
edge that the bogie known as the ' * servant question ' ' 
was no bogie, but a natural process of evolution, the 
matter having been admirably stated by Mrs. Helen B. 
Starrett : 

"Ina large part the insubordination of servants arises from 
the growing sense of unwillingness to be directed and governed 
by the individual. It is the spirit of the age which rebels against 
the dictates of the individual, but submits freely to the despo- 
tism of an organization." 

College women meditated on these things ; college 
women demonstrated in their own homes, many of 
them, full capacity to meet and master the daily prob- 
lems of living, and speculated as to why the initial 
scheme of Vassar College which had planned for a 
course of domestic economy had fallen through ; why 
Wellesley found it hard to live up to her plan for work 
from each student, and Holyoke no less, Smith and 
Bryn Mawr calmly turning their backs on the whole 
question. 

As it then stood these last were in the right. It was 
a trade school that was wanted ; a place "where," as| 
Mrs. Ellen H. Richards puts it, "the apprentice has 
to go through all the steps day by day mechanically 
until he cannot help doing them right." Every effort 
to teach domestic economy had been on this plan and 
by divine appointment it has failed. The foundation 



Introduction. . xv 

aws of matter and form, the principles of trades, with 
just enough practice to illustrate them, can be taught 
n a few mouths. 

While these things moved slowly toward the fore- 
ground, facts had at last become perceptible to the 
university mind, not as a whole, but in isolated cases. 
Agricultural colleges, notably Illinois and Iowa, had 
tried the trade-school theory and failed, each attempt, 
however, being of inestimable advantage in the way 
of reconstruction of thought. The Collegiate Alumnae 
in the meantime formed a Sanitary Science Club and 
issued a little manual on House Sanitation, the first 
suggestion of the large work in the same lines now 
going on under Dean Marion Talbot in Chicago Uni- 
versity. 

At this point we may begin to number the univer- 
sities in which such work has actually been done. That 
of Chicago, with its large endowment and ample 
facilities for laboratory work, leads, so far as this phase 
is concerned. But the University of Wisconsin in its 
School of Economics may fairly claim to have shared 
the same thought at the same time and struggled to 
give it more material form. Mrs. Adams, the culti- 
vated and large-minded wife of the President, urged on 
the movement, and Dr. Richard T. Ely, wise and far- 
seeing as is his wont, includes in his plan a course of 
^welve lectures on household economics, given under 
[his direction in the spring of 1895, atl( i urges the add- 
ing of suitable buildings with funds enough to fully 
equip a working department. 

The course given at the University of Wisconsin 
was made as closely condensed as possible, twelve 
lectures being all that the spring term could carry. 
No building for technical work is yet planned, and the 



xvi Introduction. 

lecturer is compelled to give the results of practice 
only, and, as far as possible, an outline of a subject 
which means, at its fullest, three years of university 
work. 

The University of Illinois had a tentative course fif- 
teen years ago on the trade-school basis and dropped it 
for lack of both funds and interest. Now with a fresh 
and more vital sense of need, it has secured a repetition 
of eight of the lectures given at the University of Wis- 
consin, and hopes presently to organize a fully equipped 
department. Lake Forest, Illinois, has a lecturer and 
a limited but excellant plan of work, the Northwestern 
University, at Kvanston, is questioning as to action in 
the same direction, and Mrs. Kedzie, of the Kansas 
State Agricultural College, has had distinct success 
in work there. Inquiries have also come in from 
manjr co-educational colleges and from many of the 
larger seminaries which prepare for them. From the 
remote West, as Washington and California, to the 
middle West, the question appears to be under active 
discussion, and a recent letter from Winnipeg begs for 
all possible information on the general subject. Many 
of the agricultural colleges are organizing departments, 
with admirably trained heads, and all are discussing 
the special needs of women in this direction. 

In Vassar College, Professor Lucy Salmon has de-| 
voted much time and energy to a study of domestic 
service, having prepared and sent out thousands of 
blanks with inquiries to be filled in, the result being/ 
embodied under the title " A Statistical Inquiry Con-^ 
cerning Domestic Service," in the papers of the Ameri- 
can Statistical Society, June, 1892. Others in the same 
line will be found in The Cosmopolitan, July, 1893, and } 
the New England Magazi?ie, April, 1894. Vassar itself 



\ 



Introduction. x vi i 

does not yet see the necessity for sharing in the new 

movement, nor singularly enough do any of the 

colleges exclusively for women ; though many of them 

have alumnae who are active workers in this field, and 

plan the preparation of various hand-books in addition 

to the one on Household Sanitation already in use. 

iMrs. Ellen H. Richards, of the Boston Institute of 

i Technology, has been an active worker in organization 

,and stands as a high authority in the chemistry of 

foods, their adulterations, etc., Mrs. Mary Hinman 

Abel being equally well known, and both being fitted 

for every phase of university work in Household 

Economics as a whole. 

I have before me a series of letters from college presi- 
dents, all inquiring as to possibilities and expressing a 
keen interest in the matter. Cornell is one of these ; 
but the feeling is much stronger in the West than in 
the East, Nebraska, Iowa State University and Iowa 
College at Grinnell, with many others, expressing not 
only interest, but full intention to get to work them- 
j selves as soon as money can be appropriated to this 
jend. 

j In California, though hampered by the same diffi- 
culty of lack of money, Stanford University has been 
(doing admirable work under the guidance of Mrs. 
I Mary Roberts Smith, a graduate of Cornell, for some 
i 'years professor of history at Wellesley College, and 
'later at Iceland Stanford, who is bending all the ener- 
gies of her fine mind and personality to these new lines 
pf work. I give the outline followed by her, as illus- 
trative of what can be done without laboratory or other 
l Working appliances. 



xvni Introduction. 

EELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY. 
ECONOMICS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE. 

A. Economic function of the housewife. 

B. Domestic architecture. 

i. Location, foundation, exterior plans (elevation). 

2. Interiors : drawing simple house plans. 

3. Visiting houses criticising plans. 

4. Relations of rooms. 

C. Plumbing and drainage. 

1. Bacteria. 

2. Principles of plumbing : pipes, closets, lavatories, baths, 
sinks. 

3. Disinfection and pests. 

D. Ventilation. 

B. Heating : principles of combustion. 

1. Stoves, fireplaces, steam, hot water. 

2. Varieties and value of fuels. 

F. Lighting : lamps, gas, electricity. 

G. Artistic and economic furnishing. 
H. Food. 

1. Chemistry of food. 

2. Composition of food materials. 

3. Chemistry of cookery. 

4. Diet of students and children. 

5. Adulteration. 

6. Vegetarianism. 

7. Beverages. 

8. Cooking apparatus : range, gas, gasoline, aladdin oven, 
electricity. 

9. Marketing and supplies. 
I. Domestic labor. 

1. Statistical, economic and sociological basis of domestic 

service. » 

2. Co-operative living. \ 

3. Time work and piece work. 

4. Doing one's own work. 
J. Household Finance. 

1. Accounts, bills, receipts. 
During the course the students made frequent visits to the 



Introduction. • xix 

house of some of the ladies of the faculty, criticising and receiv- 
ing instruction, especially in household apparatus and plans. 
'Although we have no household laboratory, several demonstra- 
tions were performed before the class, illustrating points in 
themistry, microscopy and bacteriology as applied to the house- 
hold. The course was further elaborated by some excellent 
lectures, by 

; Prof. A. B. Clark on Household Architecture, Convenience 
find Economy. 

I Prof. B. C. Brown on the Principles of Artistic Decoration. 
[j Dr. T. B. Wood on Bacteriology and Domestic Hygiene. 



This is the summary of the university movement as 
it stands to-day, widespread as the thought seems to 
be, still lacking the strong grip that insures immediate 
adoption of an organized system of work. The human 
[animal, its ways, needs, rights, is still only indirectly 
studied. Men and women leave college in possession 
of full knowledge as to the interior structure of the 
clam, what food it demands, what habitat best develops 
him, but their own is a sealed book. Dyspepsia rules 
with professor and student alike ; air of absolute foul- 
iiess is peacefully consumed by the most intelligent, 
jnd how to clothe the human body is still apparently an 
'■nsolvable problem. Blank ignorance on all these points 
k accepted without the faintest thought of its disgrace or 
| ts danger. The human animal feminine trusts that in- 
I ,tinct will teach her how to rule a house and guide her 
! joung. The human animal masculine believes that Prov- 
ince arranges these things, and that scientific cook- 
ery, sanitation, and all that are the fad of a small school 
f cranks. In the meantime social problems of every 
;der, born of this gross ignorance and indifference, 
j ress upon us and clamor for a solution the untrained 
lind can never give, while legislators for state univer- 



xx Introduction. 

sities and boards for private ones are not yet awake to 
these facts or the lesson time holds for all. 

We come now to another form of the movement, tha ! 
embodied in the great Institutes, Pratt, Drexel, thjj 
College for the Training of Teachers, and Armour, J 
portion of the general University Extension movement 
all of them doing admirable work. But the director/ 
of the ' ' Domestic Science ' ' department in each seera 
all to unite in the conclusion that a larger handling i, 1 
essential and that the relation of home to state must b\ 
taught as it never has been taught before. Side by sids 
with this conclusion and the search for better method* 
goes the work of the National Household Economic 
Association, formed in 1893, having branches in manj 
of our cities, state presidents in all the states, and e 
definite plan for work as follows : 



The object of this association shall be : — 1. To awaken the pub 
lie mind to the importance of establishing bureaus of informa-j 
tion where there can be an exchange of wants and needs between 
employer and employed, in every department of home and sociaj 
life. 2. To promote among members of the association a mor e 
scientific knowledge of the economic value of various foods ar<j 
fuels ; a more intelligent understanding of correct plumbinp 
and drainage in our homes, as well as need for pure water atjd 
good light in a sanitarily built house. 3, To secure skilld^ 
labor in every department in our homes, and to organize schocfi s 
of household science and service. I 

The Federation of Woman's Clubs has accepted th/is 
form as a basis for a section in every woman's club fj^j 
the study of household economics, and programmes m x 
this work have been prepared by Dr. Mary Green, Miy«3. 
Kate Watson, and Mrs. Helen Campbell. Chicago i\.$ 
discussing earnestly the possibilities of a great trainin 
school for mistresses and maids, the organization oi 



Introduction, xxi 

household service on a new basis, the forming of a gen- 
uine employment bureau, with graded rates of payment, 
and great central offices — another Bourse de Travail, 
with even larger scope than that most admirable 
bureau. Philadelphia, in its Civic League, has formed 
a branch for this study and the investigations connected 
with it, and has been preparing what is likely to prove 
a valuable report of their work in the line of domestic 
service. Syracuse is also doing admirable work. 
New York, in a branch of its Civic League under the 
direction of Mrs. Robert Abbe and other women as well 
known, is planning for investigation in these lines, and 
Boston is making practical tests of some of the new 
theories. In short the new-comer knocks at every 
door, and in this swift-moving generation it must, from 
the very nature of things, find speedy entrance — and a 
recognized footing — wherever thinking men and women 
work together for that future which is theirs in com- 
mon. 

I wish to give here my very hearty thanks to Mrs. 
Charlotte P. Stetson, whose deep interest has at various 
points taken the form of co-operation, to Dr. Richard 
T. Kly, for his constant faith in the work to be done, 
and to Mr. Paul Tyner, for efficient help both as critic 
and in technical lines. 

Boston, October, 1896. 




HOUSEHOLD ECONOMICS 



CHAPTER I. 

THE STATICS AND DYNAMICS OF HOUSEHOLD 

ECONONY. 

The Relation of Household Economics to Life — The Evolution 
of the Family — Structural and Functional Organization of 
the Household ; the Essentials of Each and their Interde- 
pendence. Arts, Crafts, and Sciences Involved — The Low 
Popular Opinion of Household Economics, its Cause and 
Effect — Personality and Generalization — Savage and Child 
to Scientist — Evolution of Household Economics — Divi- 
sion of Labor on Sex Lines and the Biological Reason for 
this Division — Ascent of Man Economically. 

IT is a study hitherto unknown, upon which we are 
about to enter ; a study the ground of which has 
existed from the beginning of human history and 
behind even that beginning, yet the science of which 
has not yet, in any real sense, been given to the world. 
As for a long time we lived and died, fought, loved, 
worked, suffered, and enjoyed without any knowledge 
of the anatomy and physiology of the human body ; and 
as for a long time nations rose and fell, flourishing and 
rouggling as conditions varied, without any knowledge 
hi social economics : so have households increased and 



2 Household Economics. 

multiplied on the face of the earth, carrying the life of 
man within them, and undergoing the most vivid ex- 
tremes of success and failure, pain and difficulty, ease 
and pleasure, without any knowledge of Household 
Economics, or indeed that such a thing existed or could 
exist. A definition is then the first thing needed. 
Let us see if we can compass one. 

The statics and dynamics of Household Economy 
are to the household organism precisely what anatomy 
and physiology are to the physical organism. In the 
individual, in the household, in the state, is organic 
life ; and until that organic life is understood, — its 
essential structure and functions, — we cannot know 
how to maintain its health or promote its develop- 
ment. 

Household Economics is the connecting link between 
the physical economics of the individual and the social 
economics of the state. Its relation to human life is 
of the most intimate and vital nature. 

To the individual, the condition of Household Eco- 
nomics means the health and happiness of his life. So 
vital a process as the nutrition of humanity lies in its 
most important stages — those of selection, preparation, 
and consumption, — almost entirely within the range of 
this science. 

The life of the family, with all that it means to the 
life of the race, is absolutely dependent on the house- 
hold life. Whether we live or die, and how we live or 
die, are largely determined by our household condition. 
The household and its healthy action is to the fanily 
what our own body and its healthy action is to our 
own soul. The family without the household is bivt 2 
disembodied spirit. And the family in a disorde. 
household is but a sick and sorry spirit at best. 



Statics and Dynamics. 3 

One might almost say of the relation of Household 
Economics to life that it is life ; for life, beyond that of 
the solitary savage, could not exist without it. 

On the other hand, the relation of this great science 
to social life is equally close, equally important. The 
household, in its evolution of related industries, is the 
parent of the state. Aristotle is right in his far-seeing 
statement that the state comes first ; but that prece- 
dence is the precedence of the artist, who tells you 
that you must rightly draw the whole before you 
can rightly draw the part ; — the greater includes the 
less. 

But to the evolutionist, the family comes first in 
order of development ; as it was through the develop- 
ment of the family instincts, primarily the maternal, 
that any combination of men became possible. The 
evolution of a home was as strenuous and tremendous 
i :1 a ishiess as the evolution of a mother and to under- 
S jd either one or the other some very serious study 
j n iology is necessary. Mothers had to come first, 
an Drummond gives the process in that wonderful 
e jgh chapter in his Ascent of Man, " The Evolution 
f ,1 other." 

^h the forming of that family which the very 
na j.alist has had to call Mammalia, the family of 
mo ^rs, came the final unfolding. The beginning 
f ^tective maternity was hardly more than a dumb 
mst'Ct f ee li n g 0ll t toward the thing to come. The 
h ur ng woman-savage, still more animal than human, 
st j r d by the cry of the rain-pelted baby slung at her 
k ac , sought some covert — a place wherein to make a 
nes for her young. Bare earth, the shelter of tree or 
roc might suffice her own need — but the baby must 
ij a e something better. So began the cave-dwelling 



t 



4 Household Economics. 

era, the lake dwellers, the stone age, — all that marvel- 
lous story of time and the generations of time. At 
last, out of cave and hut and every mere make-shift of 
habitation grew, bit by bit, the wonder of comfort, of 
beauty and fitness embodied to-day in the noblest form 
of human dwelling, the seal and token of the evolution 
of the family. 
This is the central fact of civilization. 

" If the crowning work of organic evolution is the Mammalia, 
the consummation of the Mammalia is the Family. Physi- 
cally, psychically, ethically, the Family is the masterpiece of 
evolution. The creation of Evolution, it was destined to be- 
come the most active instrument and ally which Evolution has 
ever had. For what is its evolutional significance ? It is the 
generator and the repository, of the forces which alone can 
carry out the social and moral progress of the world. There 
they rally when they become enfeebled ; there their excesses 
are counterbalanced, and thence they radiate out, refined and 
reinforced, to do their holy work." l a- 

It is very clear, then, that the vaguest and loosest fJtn- 
social organisms is not found until some degree of fa^ir^ 
ily organism exists. Organism stands simply for \ n A 
interdependent relation of structure and function ; , ^ 
not until the interrelation of service and defence in 70 ^~ 
primitive household established connection betvv re j a _ 
individuals was there the possibility of such inter? 
tion in a state. ^ 

The household is a living organism ; — that is 00( j 
keynote to its study. A thing cannot be undersi^^ 
until we know whether it be alive or dead, whe arj( j 
its parts are connected in any essential order, n on 
whether its processes have any essential conne(^ e 
with its parts. All that can be predicted as to 

1 Drummond's The Ascent of Man, p. 316. 



"jf 



Statics and Dynamics. 5 

essentials of any living organism is true of the house- 
hold. It is a form of human life, outside the physical 
life, inside the social life, having its own economy. 

Its structural demands vary, but certain essentials 
always remain. The structure of the household must 
provide for the accommodation of the related beings 
who are its life, and accommodation for the activities 
which maintain their lives in that relation. 

Its functional demands vary, but certain essentials 
always remain. The functions of the household must 
fulfil those activities which are essential to its main- 
tenance. 

This structure and these functions are as truly or- 
ganic as any imaginable. The one maintains the 
other, — function forming organ, — and neither existing 
alone. 

The industries which form our household functions 
vary widely in kind and in degree. This has been true 
from the time when all that was done beyond fighting 
was done at home, to the time when nothing shall 
remain to the household labors but the immediate 
personal care of the family. 

There are special reasons why, at the outset of our 
work together, a kind of attention is demanded which 
it may be a difficult matter to give. On the one hand, 
we have heard all our lives of the importance of the 
knowledge we are beginning to call ' ' Domestic Sci- 
ence," or " Household Science," according as we in 
qvaX own minds limit or extend the term. On the other 
\&&, we have seen the application of this knowledge 

-o^ftised by the lowest class of people in the lowest 

{e of labor. It is my business to introduce to you 

\ ] a new science attended only by the difficulties of 

\ ! unknown ; but an old one, long misunderstood, 



6 Household Economics. 

and buried under centuries of densest prejudice. 
Therefore, I appeal from Caesar unto Caesar ; from 
the minds of women accustomed to regard Household 
Science as a thing born of and guided by instinct, to 
the minds of scholars trained in the new scientific 
thought that knows nor small nor great in TRUTH. 

The study that lies before us is not ' ' how to keep 
house." This course does not propose to graduate 
licensed housekeepers nor trained servants. We are 
to study those branches of social economy which are 
involved in housekeeping, the sciences, arts, and crafts 
therein practised, and their effect on human life. 
Thus far there has been little attempt to consider the 
matter as a whole, or to bring to bear upon it the 
methods which govern our investigation of the sciences 
in general. Where such attempt has been made, we t 
have dealt with scattered details and ignored general 
principles. 

It is not a series of developments from human life 
that we are to treat, however, but human life itself, at 
its roots. From these roots have grown innumerable 
activities, some practically perfected, others still j 
unfinished. 

It is a view, then, of a coherent whole that we 
want ; not of one or another of the integral parts and 
activities of the household, but of that intelligent 
relation of all its parts and activities to a common 
purpose, which we call Household Economics. Under 
this head are grouped as requisite for understanding- of 
our present household life, the following subjects 

A knowledge of situation suitable for human }*Qes t / 
soil, climate, elevation, — and their relation to -a/£fc / 
and character. 

A rchitecture— considered not only for outside'ttfy- 



Statics and Dynamics, 7 

— a thing to be looked at— but also for structural use 
and value ; with the relation of rooms and their uses 
to the general plan. 

And then for this body the thing the world craves 
and is finding in large measure from day to day — ■ 
light, light, and always more light ! Its office in the 
household life, as in the civic, — the full mission and 
meaning of sunlight for every nook and corner, and, 
following hard upon it, those other necessities for the 
house — heating, airing, watering, and draining. 

Jean Mace in his charming History of a Mouthful 
of Bread compares the circulation of the blood to a 
water supply ; and he is right. As much water as 
conies into the house must go safely out of it, unless 
we want to swim. 

At once, then, comes demand for at least a partial 
knowledge of the sciences that must work for us in 
each of these lines : chemistry, physiology, the laws of 
hygiene and sanitation ; every force that can be brought 
to bear on the problem of living, and its handling in 
such fashion that all men may have and know the 
j best. 

One may well pause here for a moment for one 
thought as to the deeper meaning of this house which 
we are to build together, and no one has said it all 
more perfectly than William Gannett in his The House 
Beautiful, which ought to be in every household in the 
land. Men and birds seem to him much of the same 
order in their foragings on Nature and rearrangement 
of the plunder according to their respective tastes. But 
for ihe creation of man's hands, is another word out of 
a Bible verse. 

" • I heard a great voice out of Heaven ; Behold the tabernacle 
of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall 



8 Household Economics. 

be his people.' Call the great Power God or by what name we 
will, that Power dwells with us in so literal a fashion, that every 
stone and rafter, every table, spoon, and paper scrap bears stamp 
and signature to eyes that read aright : 'The house in which we 
live is a building of God, a house not made with hands.' " 

As the body is forever the temple of the Holy Ghost, 
to be made fair and. clean and perfect for that indwell- 
ing spirit, so the house stands as the shell in which 
that body must do its work, hampered and hindered if 
imperfectness has been admitted, helped and strength- 
ened if wisdom has builded the home. Bear it in mind 
all the way through, that this structure is a vital thing, 
and then the processes that follow and fall into line 
will take on new meaning and carry larger significance. 

With the skeleton well arranged comes the beautiful 
body, and there follows as naturally as for the human 
body, DECORATION, a much abused word, but full 
of fine possibilities. Color! Do you know what that 
can mean ? Not screaming combinations that, as the 
French say, ''fly at the eye," but soft shadings and 
tintings with points of clear color, as a flower grows 
and as a woman should dress. Desigyi ! Wisdom must | 
enter into that, and sense of form and the beauty and 
power of true lines. Line and color together, what | 
they mean — what the)' are to us ! 

Our soul-life is modified hour by hour by these stone 
or wooden bodies in which we move about ; especially 
are the children modified, soul and body, and for this 
we see full reasons in the words already quoted from 
Gannett. 

Furnishing follows, holding all I have suggested as 
to form and color, limited and ennobled by use, and 
giving us a study full of profound significance. 

Then come in due order the following industries, all 



Statics and Dynamics. 9 

growing out of household life and needs, two of them 
always inseparable, cooking and cleaning, — followed 
by repairing, renewing, serving, nursing, teaching. 

To perform or to properly superintend these indus- 
tries is required a knowledge of the chemistry of foods 
and of cleansing processes, and to some degree of agri- 
culture. Physiology is absolutely necessary, and hy- 
giene and general sanitation go hand in hand with 
both. 

All these knowledges are involved in household eco- 
nomics. It is the administration of human life, — neither 
more nor less. Not all of it, but all of it up to a cer- 
tain point. Not knowing these things is largely what 
keeps our rate of living down so low — and results in. 
turning out as our home product, weak, unhealthy, and 
inharmonious lives, to the deterioration of the worlds 
To rightly understand them and appfy them, will make 
a new people. But till the minds of college women, 
trained to logical processes of thought, looking with 
clear, dispassionate eyes at the medley that makes the 
past, and with trained and skilful hands seeking to 
bring order out of the chaos, — until these have settled 
the meaning and bearing of the science of Household 
Economics, the organization that will change the face 
of the world remains impossible. Growth in power of 
organization is the mark of all progressive civilization ; 
and it is the lack of this quality which has left House- 
hold Economics where it is. 

Popular opinion on the subject of our study is very 
low. The whole field of study has suffered mainly in 
that the thinking half of humanity have dismissed it 
scornfully as "women's work" — thus showing the 
limits of their thinking. Being in the hands of women, 
it was supposed, on the one hand, to be of a simple and 



io Household Economics. 

easy nature, as the poet tells us in his favorite phrase, 
" light household tasks," — a singularly inapplicable 
term for the labor of washing, scrubbing, sweeping, 
and the endless stepping and standing involved in 
domestic industry. On the other hand, it was sup- 
posed, — the whole scheme was supposititious, — that, 
being the work of women, and women being creatures 
gifted with a superhuman faculty of intuition, that they 
knew how to do their work by instinct. Any deficiency 
shown in intuition was supposed to be made up by 
tireless industry, and if things went wrong in the 
household economy it must be due to one or two things 
— either laziness or lack of " womanliness," i.e., intui- 
tion. The general low status of domestic industries, 
if considered at all, was considered as owing to the 
nature of women, and dismissed with p^ or contempt. 

In the meantime, this ignored system of household 
economy continued to follow its own laws and to work 
its own results, and the progress of the world and the 
life of mankind hung upon its footsteps. As the woman 
is the home, as the home is the nation, — the popular 
opinion of household economy is as much mistaken as 
popular opinion is regarding some other questions. 

The cause of this low opinion is partly, as I have saic 
from its being women's work, and so not studied b 
men, partly to a similar feeling, dating from that perio 
in early history and prehistoric times when all such labo 
was performed by slaves, partly to the low price pai( 
for household labor, — a fact due mainly to the tw< 
causes just mentioned, — and partly to an instinctive 
feeling in the heart of the seeker for truth to go uj 
and out — not in. 

So we have quartered the earth and subdued it ; wc 
have burrowed beneath its surface ; we have measured 



Statics and Dynamics, 1 1 

the ocean depths and charted its oozy floor ; we have 
diligently striven to reach the North Pole ; we have 
exultantly explored the heavens with telescopes and 
hypotheses to aid ; we have even turned our attention 
to humanity, — an interesting field manifesting marked 
peculiarities and variations, — but we have not yet 
learned in all our wanderings this simple precept : 
' ' IvOok at home ! ■' ' 

The effect of this ignorance of the very fountain of 
progress, has been to retard the growth of civilization 
most materially and to shorten and embitter human 
life. Consider for a moment the order of importance 
of human activities. Our business here is to be better 
human beings — to be better and to leave behind us 
those better than ourselves. Unless the people are 
improved by it, civilization is a failure. The whole 
use and purpose of every thing we do, from the work 
of the farmer to that of the poet, is to make better 
people. The important time to improve people is in 
youth, because, Weissmann to the contrary notwith- 
standing, that improvement is transmitted ; the growth 
that is made before reproduction is the most essential ; 
and the growth that is made afterward is most valuable 
as it affects the young. These years of youth most 
vital of all to true progress, are necessarily passed at 
home, and therefore the home is the most important 
place in the world. The highest duty of the state is to 
so legislate and administer as to make good homes, for 
it is only a larger home, and for the same uses, that 
the state exists. 

In this most important place, in these most impor- 
tant years, all our lives are passed, and according to the 
condition of our household economy are our whole lives 
modified. The effect of our ignorance and indifference 



1 2 Household Economics. 

on this vital system is to allow it to remain in such a 
condition as to be largely responsible for the unhappi- 
ness of the world. This the social student can see 
plainly enough, being accustomed to scientific thinking 
— to perceiving the relation between cause and effect, 
and to that invaluable habit of the scientific mind of 
accepting, without prejudice, all truth as important. 
But the popular mind cannot see as he sees, and the 
only difficulty which lies in the way of spreading a 
better understanding of this great subject — this allied 
group of sciences, arts, and crafts — is the lamentable 
fact that the subject is wrapped in densest prejudice. 
Ignorance is a slight obstacle, easily removed ; a condi- 
tion of healthy ignorance is a promising one, but to 
have the whole case prejudged, — already labelled 
" Commonplace — we know all about it," and laid aside, 
— this is an almost insurmountable wall. 

An operation like that whereby the skull of the idiot 
is cut and lifted so that his brain can grow, will have 
to be performed in some ingenious analogous manner, 
before the general mass of domestic conservatism can 
be made to realize the nature and value of the very 
place it holds. y 

Personification stands in the way ; personification, 
the mark of the child and the savage ; that which per- 
sonifies rock and river, cloud and star ; and which 
seeks retaliation on the chair that is fallen over. In 
the savage mind, there is no power to generalize. He 
can say " good stick," " good meat" " good man," — 
but "goodness" has no brain-cell ready to hold it. 
To generalize, however hastily and crudely, marks 
growth in mental power. Here, in household economy, 
most of us are still in the stage of untutored and untu- 
torable savage. We can say "my house," "my 



Statics and Dynamics. . 1 3 

mother's house," and " Mrs. Jones's house," but THE 
HOUSE we have no brain cell ready to hold. 

In a field of thought which throbs and teems with 
personality, as does this one, it is harder to think fairly 
and clearly than in some new and abstract science like 
chemistry. 

Every detail mentioned in our work — and our work 
must deal largely in detail — fills the mind with crowd- 
ing memories, pleasant, funny, exhausting, always 
personal. In touching on matters of detail in house- 
hold economy, every woman who hears will feel the 
temptation to receive the thought with a strong per- 
sonal color, and, perhaps, have her feelings hurt. If, 
for instance, I state that the average grade of home-made 
bread in America is 70 per cent., or 30 per cent, below 
par, some will feel that their mother's product in that 
line is insulted, and others that their mother's special 
triumphs languish unacknowledged. Yet nobody's 
mother is in question. The question is the average 
grade of bread in America. There is no more occasion 
for one to call to mind their own grade of bread than 
when we are told that our average length of life is thirty- 
six years, to instantly assert that our grandfather is 
eighty-three. 

To the study of the subject before us we must bring 
all the resources of the scientific mind, carefully resist- 
ing any impulse to personify facts. 

There is room for feeling, deep and earnest feeling, 
for the condition of Household Economics furnishes 
not only food for thought but food for laughter, — and 
for pain too deep for tears ; but think and feel as we 
may, let it be general not personal. 

We shall find in the definite study of the larger 
course these lectures are to outline, that authorities 



1 4 Household Economics. 

upon it are few ; and in varying degree partial and , 
unsatisfactory, as regards Household Economics per se. 
The most monumental work — that which takes up 
woman as a whole and gives her natural history from 
the beginning of time — is Das Weib, by Dr. Herman 
Ploss, finished j ust before his death in 1891, and cover- 
ing every phase of her life from the cradle to the 
grave, — girl, maid, wife, mother, widow, being treated 
anatomically and physiologically, as well as in all other 
ways. To this one may turn as one turns to encyclo- 
paedia or dictionary, certain that all ascertainable facts 
are there, and that the patient indefatigable German 
has given us a record that will serve as reservoir on 
which to draw for the present, and as data for a future 
work, in which the bearing of this mass of information 
will be more clearly seen, unhampered by the German 
temperament and its limitations, the larger thought of 
a larger age making deductions more in line with 
absolute truth than some of his. 

Next in authority, we have in Man and Woman, by 
Havelock Ellis, the best English presentation of the 
subject, as the Anglo-Saxon scientific mind has summed 
it up, facts being given and deductions left chiefly to 
the reader, the compact volume holding many of the 
facts included in the larger work of Ploss. In our own 
country, one of our most honored names as scientist, 
Eester F. Ward, in his work on Dynamic Sociology, 
gives, though limited to a chapter or two, 1 the broadest 
and most intelligent handling the subject has ever 
received. No sharper arraignment of the inadequacy 
of women has ever been made, nor any more inspiring 
demand upon her highest faculties. The faith in what 

1 Dynamic Sociology ', by Lester F. Ward, vol. i., pp. 55 2-61 
and 655-67. 



Statics and Dynamics, . 1 5 

woman is to do is tremendous, and the call to higher 
action like the sound of a trumpet. 

It is an associate worker with Mr. Ward in the 
National Museum at Washington, Mr. Mason, who has 
added to this a volume on Woman'' s Share in Primitive 
Culture, in which the development of the peaceful arts 
and of domestic duties is made plain. Herbert Spencer 
in the beginning of his great system of philosophy, 
divides the life-history of civilization into two periods : 
militancy and industrialism. In the first, as every early 
record from that of cave-dweller up shows us, men and 
women were side by side in the war with nature and 
the war of man with man. But as soon as both were 
sufficiently subdued to allow time to think, the era of 
industrialism opened up, and there came gradually the 
birth of the great occupations of all civilization. 

Crawling up and out from primeval ooze, on through 
the myriad stages ending in fully differentiated man, 
the new science, anthropology, gives us every step of the 
way, and for long it is absolutely side by side, with no 
more difference in hunting and killing power than lies 
to-day between lion and lioness, or between the tiger 
and his mate. But as the brain ceased to be a mere 
rudimentary organ with a few faculties in evidence, 
and took on deeper and deeper convolutions, the in- 
stinct of care-taking showed itself, and the world's 
first housekeeping began. 

Ten divisions of employment discover themselves, 
and the rise and progress of each is shown in many 
wa}^s. History, language, archaeology, folk-lore, and 
ethnology join hands in giving us the sum of all — the 
modern woman, whose voyage is still in troubled 
waters and who needs a chart hardly less than did the 
first provider for the wants of human kind. Standing 



1 6 Household Economics. 

at the very edge of time, the first food-bringer cast 
about for means to handle the fruits and seeds which 
could not at once be consumed, and planned how best 
to secure a more uniform supply of each. From the 
one need came her invention of the mortar and of the 
upper and nether grindstones, the precursors of the 
great mills that do her work to-day. From the other 
grew husbandry and all means for preserving food. 

It is at this point that there enters upon the scene 
the domestic cat, caught while young and reared in the 
house by the wise woman who had seen on what fare 
the young wild cats subsisted, and who knew that in 
taming them lay the safety of her stores of corn from 
termites and from field-mice and rats. With the meet- 
ing of one need came another ; pottery in all its forms 
being the necessity that went with the preparation of 
food, the ornamentation of this pottery being the next 
step forward. Weaver, skin-dresser, potter, general 
beast of burden, jack-at- all- trades, artist, linguist, 
founder of society, — these are the divisions she made 
for herself, and under which the anthropologist of to-day 
considers her. How she learned her lessons we may 
all imagine, putting ourselves in her place and pictur- 
ing the awakening of her mind before the growing needs, 
as cave gave place to hut and hut to the dwelling that 
in its gradually refining lines meant in the days to come 
such flower of all past growth as Athens gave us in 
the Parthenon. 

There are many of these domestic industries still 
almost as rude and primitive as in the beginning, nor 
does any one appear to find this singular or containing 
any reproach to women, who certainly have deepest 
interest in discovering the easiest way for every neces- 
sary daily process. This applies not only to industries 



Statics and Dynamics. , 1 7 

and utensils, but also to processes ; even the intelligent 
housekeeper still talks about "luck with her sponge 
cake ! ' ' Luck ! There is no such word in science, 
and to make sponge cake is a scientific process ! 

In each industry which developed in the hands of 
women has been the same story. Wherever invention 
could work, gradually all that gave the thing its indivi- 
dual character has passed from the hands of women to 
those of men, and she has reverted more and more to 
the earlier employment, the mere provision for absolute 
daily needs, which the farmer's wife, for instance, meets 
to-day, often with little more outlook on or knowledge 
of larger life than that owned by the first cave-dweller. 

Buckle in one of his summaries, 1 wrote a conclusion 
more than once repeated : " Women are far more con- 
servative than men," — and this fact, to which most 
close observers bear witness, has very plain reasons 
for its existence, — being due absolutely to the narrow, 
unvarying range of the duties in which she is held. 

The division of labor between the home and the 
world has also been the division between the woman 
and the man ; and in this there is deep biological 
reason. All productive industry began with women, 
because of the constructive energy of her nature, the 
anabolism of her sex. To acquire and preserve is the 
primal distinctive quality of the germ cell as distinct 
from the sperm cell, and to acquire and preserve is 
still the power of woman. When vivaparous maternity 
called for new effort on the part of the mother to pro- 
vide for her offspring, that effort was made. The need 
of the offspring is the minimum of the mother's exer- 
tion, from the insect and reptile to the human mother 
of to-day. Here is where the retarded development of 

1 Eraser's Magazine, April, 1858. 



1 8 Household Economics. 

household economy strikes at the deepest roots of life. 
Our mothers, over-burdened and perplexed, spend in 
defective methods of labor the strength required for 
their primal function, and, because of this, the race, in 
the most literal sense, is " nipped in the bud." 

That woman as a sex should hold the office of feeder 
and clother and keeper of life is right, wholly right ; 
but unless the processes followed are abreast of the age 
the end is not fully attained. 

The industries which began in her strong, wise 
mother-hands have been taken from her by her sons 
and carried out to fuller differentiation than was possi- 
ble in the home circle. This was natural, but it is to 
be noted that the destructive energy of the male was 
onfy turned to construction after the fixed home and 
its demands required of him a share in its activities. 
Slowly the slayer ceased to destroy and learned to 
create, — slowly and partially and always from her. 

The ascent of man, viewed economically, is a definite 
progression — an endless procession— from the home up 
and out into the broader and more directly independe- 
dent occupations of the world. 

The home is the birthplace of every human thing. 
Out of it has come all that makes us human in the 
broader sense of the word. And though it cannot and 
should not expect to retain within its walls any indus- 
try which calls for wider coordinate action with re- 
search and experiment, yet the industries necessarily 
contained therein must be brought to our present level 
of economic advance. 

We cannot afford to have the cradle of life in an 
inferior or defective condition ; else is the life that 
comes out of it malformed and defective also. 

It is to point out something of the length and breadth 



Statics and Dynamics, . t g 

and depth of these considerations, — to trace the origin, 
evolution, present relation, and apparent tendency of 
this intensely interesting, valuable, and yet almost 
unknown subject of Household Economics, that these 
limited and condensed lectures are offered. 

references. 

The Place of Woman in Primitive Culture, by O. T. Mason. 

Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis. 

Primitive Culture, by Edward Tylor. 

Das Weib, by Dr. Herman Ploss. 

Dynamic Sociology, by Lester F. Ward, pp. 552-61 and 656-67. 

The Evolution of Marriage, by Charles L,etourneau. 

The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thompson, 

Prehistoric Man, by Daniel Wilson. 

Origin of Civilization, by Sir John Lubbock. 

Buckle's History of Civilization. 

The Ascent of Man, by Henry Drummond. . 

The House Beautiful, by William C. Gannett. 

The Story of My House, by G. H. Ellwanger. 

The City Residence, by W. B. Tuthill. 

Das Deutsche Zimmer der Gothik and Renaissaens Des Barock. 

— Rococo und Zopfstits — by Dr. Georg Hirth, Miinchen and 

Leipzig. 
Convenient Houses, with Fifty Plans for the Housekeeper, by 

Louis H. Gibson. 
Homes in City and Country, by Russell Sturgis, et al. 




CHAPTER II. 



THE HOUSE. 



What is a House ? — Relation of House to Human Life — Value 
of Human Production in Proportion to Durability and Usa- 
bility — Organic Structure of the House with its Evolution — 
The Kitchen and Derivatives — Bedroom and Derivatives — 
Parlor and Derivatives — Relation of Differentiation and 
Specialization in Building to the Same Processes in Social 
Evolution— Hut to Hotel ; Tent to Tenement— The Typical 
Farm-House— Industries Represented — The Rudimentary 
Shop — Effect of Habitat — Soil, Location, Foundation, Ele- 
vation — Topographical Maps — From Isolation to Aggrega- 
tion—The City Beautiful. 

IN studying the house as an integral part of human 
life — the housing of humanity as a branch of social 
economics — we must approach the subject with a 
full recognition of what this external manufactured 
world means to humanity. 

What is a house ? What relation does it bear to a 
human being? Is there any connection between you 
and your house in size, color, form, arrangement, loca- 
tion, decoration, furnishing ? Would it make any 
difference to you if 3^ou lived in a house which was 
painted pitch black inside and out, or unbroken white, 
or fire red ? Would you mind if it was an acre in ex- 
tent and seven feet high, or ninety-eight feet high and 
seven feet square ? Would you mind if it was all one 

20 



The House. • 2 1 

room sixty by sixty, or cut up into many apartments 
of nine by nine ? Would you mind if it was as long as 
a rope- walk, or triangular or an ellipsoid ? 

If it is plain that these things do make a difference, 
it is plain that there is as direct a connection between 
the house and the man, as between the shell and the 
shell-fish. 

Now, how if there were no house at all ? 

Imagine for a moment this world of people as they 
are now, with all their delicate machines and processes, 
all their garments and ornaments and treasures of art, 
and takeoff from them every roof and wall, — take the 
houses out of the world ! 

Humanity must needs revert to that tent and cave 
period when the arts and industries were of the order 
which could stand weather, — a far simpler form of 
social organism. 

As well unfeather the birds, unshell the turtle, un- 
skin the body, as to unhouse mankind. The house is 
the essential skin, bark, shell, outer covering of the 
human organism. Here we touch on an enormous 
truth, long lost sight of in the anti-natural spirit of 
the dark ages and still hidden from us by the long 
habit of our minds in accepting the arbitrary distinc- 
tions of these earlier days. 

Remember always how science studies connection, 
relation, shows how things go together, — while the un- 
taught mind sees only detached facts. To the average 
mind to-day, the home is only Mrs. Jones's house or 
my house ; as a part of human life it is unknown. 
This personifying of fact is a true savage instinct, — 
grown out of as the mind learns to generalize. 

The fact is that the manufactured world is as much 
a part of human life as feathers are of bird life. 






2 2 Household Economics. 

Imagine again for a moment, not only the houses 
gone, but also all things made by man gone, — books, 
clothes, tools, utensils, vessels, vehicles, — all that man's 
brain and hand have transformed from raw materials 
into parts of his life. Nothing on earth but the sub- 
human creation, and the crowding, helpless human 
beings, robbed now not only of their skins but of their 
very structure, — their organism itself ! We should be 
reduced to the mere protoplasm of humanity, living 
constituents — the stuff of which humanity is made, — 
but not humanity any more than bricks are a house or 
timbers a ship. 

See how, to assume human relation — and humanity, 
we know, is not a mere aggregation of men but a rela- 
tion of men — these numerous cells in the disorganized 
organism would have instantly to get to themselves the 
clothes without which their personal existence is not ; 
the tools without which their organic existence is not ; 
the utensils, vessels, vehicles, and means of communi- 
cation, without which their structural existence is not, 
— and so become humanity again. 

The manufactured world is as much a part of human 
life as scales are a part of the fish. The growth of 
humanity has evolved material structure and tools, 
precisely as the growth of any organism evolves its 
structure and tools. But mark here the immense su- 
periority of our degree of life. In the lower orders 
each individual body must make its own fur, horns, 
claws, — whatever it needs, made at its own individual 
expense, permanent and undetachable, having to be 
duplicated by every other of the same species, and 
serving as a modifier and limit of growth. The tusks 
of the elephant modify his mouth, head, neck, body, 
legs, motions. They modify the elephant. Precisely 



The House. 23 

so would the tools of a man modify him, — as does the 
blacksmith's hammer the blacksmith's arm, — if he had 
but one tool and used it all the time. But our racial 
advantage here is immeasurable. Our tools and our 
houses, — the further developments of material struc- 
ture required for human life — are durable, detachable, 
exchangeable. Our bodies, meanwhile, not having to 
be modified too exclusively by any one tool, retain their 
ever increasing potentiality ; and so their beauty and 
their power. 

So in our houses ; while the house to the human 
creature is as essential as the carapace to the turtle, it 
does not have to grow on him and he does not have to 
carry it around on his back. We, the living constitu- 
ents of humanity, can make vast and lasting homes, 
temples, cathedrals, palaces, in which human life can 
ebb and flow and reach toward higher things. Human 
production is valuable in proportion to its durability 
and usability ; a book, a jewel, a statue, a temple, a 
bridge, or a ship are far more valuable than are products 
of a more perishable nature, or whose usefulness is 
restricted to a single individual. One man can use a 
dozen tools, and use them well. He can, by virtue of 
his humanness, cross water, dig in the ground, hunt, 
fight, build, decorate. It is what it would be to an 
animal to be able to assume at will the power of a 
dozen other animals. It multiplies the chances of liv- 
ing manifold ; it makes man ' ' better than the lower 
animals by as many as there are of him." 

With this in mind, think then of the importance of 
the home, the outer body of the human soul ! Our 
bodies of flesh are but limited vehicles for the expres- 
sion of the personal soul. Man was not content with 
the body of flesh. Human development requires com- 



24 Household Economics. 

mensurate development in manufactured things. We 
need to make quite clear in our minds the limitation I 
imply of the personal soul and the intimate connection 
of the man-made world with civilization. 

The human being of to-day has functional ability 
and desire for activities which involve numbers of 
other human beings, and which require, as a vehicle 
for exertion, numbers of human things. 

Humanity consists of numbers of human beings in 
organic relation. Organic relation requires functional 
interdependence and structural connection and com- 
munication. 

These are clearly shown in the complex activities of 
civilization, so absolutely interdependent, — and in the 
marvellous methods of interaction evolved by the 
inventive brain and executive hand of man. With- 
out these complex activities we should not have the 
human brain ; without the manufactured conven- 
iences we should not have the complex activities. 
The human brain creates, maintains, and is dependent 
on these things which are at once its product and its 
producer. 

Into the houses which we make are born our chil- 
dren, and the houses have a hand in making them. 
Where we live and how we live has its unavoidable 
effect on what we do and how we do it. The highest 
and most enlightened human soul would naturally 
make for itself noble and beautiful houses, rightly 
situated, built, arranged, furnished, and adorned. 
So, in turn, would such houses tend to produce and 
develop high and enlightened human souls. It may 
be objected that the practical limitations of life prevent 
any possibility of having such houses, and that it 
merely fills our souls with unnecessary distress to 



The House. • 25 

hear of such unattainable ideals. To which I reply 
that we are to study Household Economics — that which 
is an abstract truth, with its derivation and direction 
and ra£e of progress ; and that existing errors in liv- 
ing do not affect the truth of Household Economics, 
any more than cripples and invalids affect the truth of 
physiology and hygiene. 

It is plain, then, that the house must grow as man 
does, from hut to palace ; from the solitary, unorgan- 
ized life to the higher form. As the individual devel- 
ops, more and more space, more and more personal 
belongings becomes the necessity. Talk as you will 
about the tub being sufficient for Diogenes, or the 
cell for the thinker, we all know better. Roger Bacon 
in a cell might think out gunpowder, a thing of 
doubtful beneficence, although undoubtedly one engine 
of progress, — but imagine Pasteur or Edison or Tesla 
held to the same limits ! No, the modern scientist 
must have not only a laboratory but a series of labora- 
tories — rooms of all sorts for all sorts of mysterious 
purposes, and more and more space for the human 
worker is the cry from every side. Here and there, 
for the mystic and ascetic, cells may suffice ; but even 
they live that life to-day only by virtue of the fact that 
the larger life of growing humanity has made such 
variation less damaging to the general trend forward. 

Imagine a dozen great men — a Gladstone, a Ruskin, 
a Watts, an Emerson, a Huxley, a Spencer— suddenly 
set down each in his small round hut, with no more 
appliances of civilization than had the first struggling 
hut-dwellers. One of two things must happen : in the 
profound barrenness and nakedness of such existence 
the soul would shrink, retrograde, and so gradually 
lose that toward which the generations have worked, 



26 Household Economics. 

or instant organization would make for the abolition 
of these limitations and the substitution of something 
as much better as could be wrested from circumstance. 
The hut for any civilized humanity has become forever 
impossible. Even the lowest tenement house, with its 
swarming humanity to whom we supply the worst and 
lowest grades of civilized appliances, is, so far as it has 
to go, a higher type of dwelling than the hut, or even 
the cottage of poetry and prose. At first, we may 
be inclined to call the cottage a higher type ; but is it 
not rather the perfection of a lower finished one ? — 
like the sea-anemones, for instance — a lovely mass of 
color swaying in the ebbing or the flowing tides, but 
fast to the rock and incapable of higher forms — a mere 
dab of undifferentiated protoplasm. The tenement, 
foul as it may be, at its worst still holds the seed of 
higher growth, and in time is to evidence the highest 
skill of man in all that makes for the well-being of the 
human creature. As it stands to day, it is in great 
degree the expression of the type of soul within its 
walls, and by reflex action it reproduces the same type 
incessantly. 

The house makes or mars its tenant far beyond what 
we have dreamed, and by long living in its limits we 
conform to its structure and actual automatic action 
sets in. Witness the housekeeper transplanted after 
years of one dwelling into the unfamiliar spaces of 
another, — and the painful jounces and jogs, as she 
walks off of steps or steps high on plane surfaces, — 
her whole organization long declining to readjust 
itself to new conditions. The old house still holds 
her and, unlike our chambered nautilus, which hav- 
ing " built up the idle door" through which it passed 
to the new abode "knows the old no more," our 



The House. . 27 

higher organized human carries the imprint of the 
old in every nerve, and fumbles unconsciously for the 
vanished spaces and places. 

Turn now again to our hut, the seed of a house to 
be, — about which, as his needs increased, the owner 
gathered other huts, each for its distinctive office. 
Take the Knglish manor-house of the last century, or 
the ideal American farm-house of our Colonial period, 
with its crowding offices, each a rudimentary shop, and 
every industry, — cooking, weaving, dyeing, brewing, 
shoe-making, tailoring, and the rest well in the fore- 
ground ; compare it with the modern city home in 
which only the first of all these industries has found 
part. Concealment of all these necessary functions is 
now a law, and the beautiful house, — so far as struc- 
ture can bring it about, — hides all outward traces of 
these lower activities, perfecting them in every possible 
way, but forbidding overflow and intrusion beyond 
their own fixed limits. 

Come now then, to the home as it stands to-day, and 
its basic necessities, and we have at once three divisions 
to treat : The kitchen J 

The bedroom v and their derivatives. 
The parlor J 

In the nature of things, the kitchen comes first, — a 
stomach for the organization to be fed. It was as stom- 
ach that the cell began, and into whatever organism 
it may develop this primal need remains unchanged, 
simply taking on more and more complexity and 
requiring a type of service unknown and undreamed 
of by a simpler and more primitive people. 

The structural development of the house follows 
precisely the similar evolution of humanity, — just as 
in any other body. Function comes before organ, we 



28 Household Economics. 

know ; hearing made the ear, and so eating made the 
kitchen. The kitchen is as much a part of human 
nutrition as mouth and teeth are, and the expansion 
and differentiation of the kitchen mirror absolutely our 
nutritive wants and habits. 

The bedroom and all its derivatives follow the en- 
larging personality of the individual. The parlor, and 
largely the dining hall, speak not only of personality 
but more of common needs, — a meeting-place. Our 
best and highest go always to the place where most 
people are. 

The kitchen and its derivatives, then, will include 
all such places as those for storage of food, for all pur- 
poses of cleansing, and for every office connected with 
the preparation of food. In close connection with it 
must be the dining-room with its perfectly appointed 
receptacles for china, glass, silver, table linen, and 
whatever else is needed in the finest serving of food. 
With these we include a butler's pantry with its hot- 
and cold-water pipes and sink for the washing of those 
dishes which are likely to fare better here than if trans- 
ported three times a day to the kitchen. 

For the bedroom must be included, bath-room, 
dressing-room closets and all that the personal and 
most private side of life demands and should have. 
Personal rights have thus far had small space in the 
architectural scheme of the home. A separate room 
is the right of every human being ; a place where one 
can lock the door, be safe from intrusion, and in silence 
and freedom gather strength for the next thing to be 
done. For children this is quite as necessary as for 
their elders. Half of the friction and much of the ill- 
health of humanity come from lack of knowledge of 
this law, and sensitive children for whom these rights 






The House, . 29 

are ignored grow into invalidism or chronic irritability 
of mind and body. There are some details as to this, 
out of place here, but coming later 011 in our discussion 
of furnishing. 

The parlor with its derivatives includes, in the 
highest type of house, the larger parlor or drawing- 
room for the reception of companies of people, the 
reception room, the library, the music room, the pict- 
ure-gallery, — all that makes up the widest beauty of 
living. The house is a growth ; as the soul grows and 
its needs increase, it reaches out in all directions for 
that finer food on which the higher living must grow, 
and the house must, in the nature of things, shape 
itself to meet these needs. If it does not, there is 
cramping and dwarfing, and the feet that should go 
forward are crippled by a self-made system, no less 
certain in its effects than that which makes crippling a 
mark of high birth for the Chinese woman. 

The hoUvSe is not only the result of character, but it 
also determines the character. The effect of habitat is 
one great factor in the making of any organism. The 
physical geography of a place determines its history, 
and the story of a race is governed by the river on 
whose banks it settled, or the mountains which shut 
them in, and in shutting out other tribes and peoples 
gave them time and freedom to develop their own 
peculiar characteristics. There is much more than 
mere coincidence in the castle on the hill and the cot in 
the valley. The castle, in the beginning, seeks the 
height that the robber baron within may swoop down on 
the prey below, or in turn give refuge to his own depend- 
ants driven out by a like-minded marauder from another 
fortress of the same order. Under the castle roof is born 
the soldier, and sometimes the great administrator ; un- 



30 Household Econo?mcs. 

der the cottage roof the follower of all peaceful arts, and 
though these facts may be interchangeable, our thought 
of each remains the same. 

It is so with all literature. The masters count the 
house the expression of the human soul that has planned 
it, and often as we read their picturing of the house, 
we see the soul with a clearness no other words could 
give. Take Mariana i?i the Moated Grange. How 
should she not be weary, poor soul ! 

' ' With blackest moss the flower pots 

Were thickly crusted one and all ; 
The rusted nails fell from the knots 

That held the peach to the garden wall. 
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange : 

Uplifted was the clinking latch ; 
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 

Upon the lonely moated grange." 

In Poe's House of Usher, the horror of it infiltrates itself 
in every inch of the fated and fatal structure ; and the 
House of the Seven Gables seems more alive than the 
gaunt form of its latest owner, the last of the Pyncheons, 
poor old Hepzibah, in her unequal warfare with an 
objecting world. We could spend hours in recalling 
the settings of many a tragedy or comedy, the great 
descriptions which have made certain houses the syno- 
nyms of their owners' lives ; but what has been said 
must suffice as hint of work you can all do for your- 
selves and which is part of the fascinating literature of 
our subject. The House in Poetry and in Prose might 
easily fill a volume, and once collected between covers, 
we should have abundant evidence of the unity of house 
and soul and the absolute dependence of one upon the 
other. 

We come now to the practical side : the points first 



The House. 3 1 

to be considered in the selection of building site, and 
here we meet the sharpest of limitations, since only mer- 
est hint can be given now of all that would come under 
this head in any full course of instruction. Soil, loca- 
tion, foundation, elevation, are the first four consider- 
ations in building and one must often determine the 
other. In the matter of soil, clay bottom means the 
impossibility almost of perfect drainage ; while a 
gravelly soil at once secures it. If it were possible to 
plan beforehand in the building of a town, experts 
could be called in to determine the most healthy loca- 
tions for the homes, leaving the less desirable portions 
for the business houses, which are occupied only the 
smaller part of the twenty-four hours every day. A 
good topographical map of town and city should be 
not only in every real-estate office, but available to 
every prospective builder and buyer. New York has 
such a map made by a famous engineer, General Kgbert 
Viele, and on it every spring and water-course, swamp, 
clay-bed, and bit of made land are plain to see ; but 
few other cities have anything so valuable and sugges- 
tive. 

Until the time comes when municipal government 
means the employment of experts for all such needs, 
we must, as far as possible, study for ourselves the na- 
ture of the soil and plant our house on a hill, it may be, 
or at any rate, on a rise of ground from which all sew- 
age and waste water can easily drain away. If it must 
be on the low lands, then seek a sandy or gravelly soil. 
Kven with sand and loam on the surface, underlying 
clay-beds often exist, and standing water will mean 
clammy moisture on walls and chill in every closed 
room. Malaria follows naturally, being the child of 
all shut-in and poisonous conditions. The dwellers on 



32 Household Economics. 

low and undrained lands are the pill and patent-medi- 
cine takers, — and there is no other civilized country 
that consumes so many tons of pills, so many thousands 
of gallons of tonics and bitters as does our own. Pure 
air, pure water, plenty of sun, — these are the natural 
tonics, and our house must stand where it can have a 
full share of all. 

' ' The well are made sick, and the sick are made 
worse for the simple lack of God's pure air and water," 
a famous physician, Dr. George Derby, wrote long 
before many people had thought much about it, and 
the reports of the Massachusetts Board of Health are 
full of facts that confirm his word. The corps of 
physicians who began the work were not only trained 
scientific men, but enthusiasts as well. The reading 
of one of these reports would perhaps go further towards 
creating the new sense of what location really means 
than could 2l\\j general statement. Location, with all 
that it includes, is the foundation of public and private 
health. In twenty-two years of almost continuous 
war, England lost 79,700 lives ; in one year of cholera 
she lost 144,860 lives, or nearly double the number lost 
in twenty- two years of war, — these deaths being the 
direct result of bad drainage and foul sanitary condi- 
tions. Many references that could be given here will 
come more properly under the head of plumbing and 
drainage, which we are to consider in another place. 

If it can be helped, and it must be helped if possible, 
do not build in the midst of sordid or ugly surroundings. 
Iyook out upon beauty, if it can be found. If it cannot, 
seek a spot as far as possible from the sight of ugliness, 
since we know already the effect of habitat on human 
kind. Above all, place the house so that full sunshine 
may be in each room during some part of the day. 



The House. • 33 

Allow no tree to stand so near that it shuts out either 
air or sunlight. They can be near enough for beauty 
and for shade, but not where they constantly shed 
moisture and make twilight in our rooms at mid-day. 
Disease flies before full sunshine. For the house shut 
in by trees, consumption and scrofula are the natural 
products, and you will find in the reports of the Massa- 
chusetts Board of Health, already referred to, a series 
of confirmations of this statement. 

Next comes foundation, a matter of indifference 
with many builders, whose only thought is the cheapest 
thing on which walls may rest. With bad mortar and 
bad laying of the stones the whole thing presently settles 
and gives to the owner or renter uneven floors, walls 
out of plumb and all the weariness of submission to an 
unnecessary evil. The best foundations are made by 
digging trenches and laying in them large, flat stones, 
far wider than the walls they are to support, covering 
these with the rough stone or rubble, as evenly as 
possible, each course being laid in common cement. A 
coat of cement should be given to the outside and 
mortar and whitewash can finish the interior. Bricks 
are often used as foundation for frame houses, as they 
give a better finish to the cellar wall, but they also 
have the primary layer of flat stone levelled with 
cement. They can also be laid on asphalt. Firmness 
and dryness are the prime needs, and whether the 
structure be palace or cottage, these never alter. 

The plan of the house includes beforehand not only 
all that has been said as to location and its bearings, 
but also the settling of the cost and an intelligent idea 
of the special family needs. Here a woman's judgment 
is absolutely essential. It is the woman who lives 
chiefly in the house and who, if common sense were 



34 Household Economics. 

brought to bear, would soon put an end to the type of 
thing the average builder offers her. Why should we 
perpetually go up and down when going sideways is 
so much easier? Why should we accept stupidly 
planned and inadequate closets or no closets at all, and 
kitchens in which everything is calculated to bring the 
greatest unhappiness to the greatest number? The 
utmost convenience in every inch of working space 
should be the law. The difference between a pantry 
opening close to the sink and one at the opposite end 
of the room may seem a small matter ; but when it 
comes to walking across the room with every dish that 
is washed, the steps soon count as miles. 

The successful workman, whose art lies on the rapid 
combination of materials, arranges materials and tools 
so as to be able to use them with the fewest possible 
movements, — and the difference between a skilled and 
an unskilled workman is not so much the rate of speed 
in motion as in the ability to make each motion tell. 
So long as we are compelled to many industries which 
hardly belong to the home, so long we must seek in 
all possible ways to give the maximum of comfort and 
convenience and the minimum of labor. To this end, 
we need to study houses as they are ; note their dis- 
crepancies and defects and plan for better things. 
There are admirable collections of plans now offered, 
and as an introduction to their study I know of noth- 
ing better than a little book by a well known architect, 
B. Gardner, of Springfield, Mass., — The House That 
Jill Built, in which Jack, realizing his unfitness for 
the office, retires into the background, emitting now 
and then a modest suggestion as to his personal desires, 
but content to leave the main features in the hands to 
which they naturally belong. 



The House. 35 

The drawing of plans is a delightful amusement, as 
well as an education, since even one, if carefully stud- 
ied in all its bearings, opens up new fields of thought 
and shows better than any mere words can our present 
limitations and the better things toward which we 
move. In the formal course of instruction to which 
this is merest hint of introduction, plan drawing is 
obligatory and each student makes several, beginning 
with the crudest and cheapest form of house, — such a 
one as might be set up on the prairie while pre-emp- 
ting a quarter-section of land, supposing there were 
any left to pre-empt, and ending with the best con- 
ception of the beautiful, spacious, well ordered home. 
There will be strange lapses and gaps in these early 
efforts, but no stranger than that of a great man before 
us, since Thomas Jefferson, who made his own plan 
for Monticello, left out the stairs altogether, and had 
to tuck them in at the last as best he could. 

It is worth while for every one of us, — no matter how 
far off a house may seem — to sit down with pencil and 
paper and think out on the paper the thing that means 
to us a house. Mathematical correctness has little to 
do with this first feeling out. It is a memorandum 
merely ; the catch words, as it were, of the full 
thought ; but having once done it an interest in houses 
per se will be acquired, such as no other method can 
give, and the first and most difficult step will have 
been taken towards that new conception of needs 
which is by and by to make over all our ugliness and 
crudity into the beauty which is the right and reason 
and necessity in all building. 

There is one vital error current among us on the 
subject of housing humanity ; it is to the effect that 
city building, city life in general, is essentially bad. 



36 Household Economics. 

We say with the pleasant finality of such sayings : 
" God made the country and man made the town." 
' ' Back to the farm ! ' ' cries the economist, the moral- 
ist, and the philanthropist, and the current philosophy 
deplores the tendency of the population to ' ' flock to 
the cities." 

Now, in truth, God made the town in a far more 
vital sense than he made the country. The country is 
simply the raw material, the undeveloped substance of 
towns. We might as appropriately say, " God made 
the paint and man made the picture, " or * ' God made 
the piano and man made the music." The city, as an 
expression of man's higher life, is in closer relation to 
God than are earth and trees. As to the specific evils 
of city life, — some of them, as dirt, disease, and im- 
morality exist in equal proportion to the population in 
the country ; while their accompanying virtues, those 
public works to provide for cleanliness, health, and 
morals, — these are physically impossible in the country. 

The evils of overcrowding, of noise, of nervous 
strain, and the like, are not civic evils, but economic 
evils, which will pass when we are wiser. 

The farmer's wife goes mad in her isolation, silence, 
and lack of stimulus, just as the citizen's wife has 
nervous prostration under opposite conditions. The 
farmer breaks down under the strain of paying the 
mortgage, just as the citizen breaks down under a 
closer competition. These are economic evils, not due 
to city or country. 

Civilization — the citying of humanity — means much. 
The development of the individual is commensurate 
with the development of society, and that depends 
upon the development of the arts, sciences, and indus- 
tries which constitute the functional activities and 



The House. 37 

maintain the structure of society. And the develop- 
ment of these arts, sciences, and industries requires 
quick, free, and general communication between num- 
bers of men ; who must therefore live near together 
and in conditions of public peace and carefulness. The 
fuller the provision of the city for the personal wants 
of its constituents, the freer the interchange of power 
which builds the human world. 

Follow your history ; the nation without a city is no 
nation at all. Isolation is not freedom. The savage 
walks in danger ; the citizen lives in peace, — peace 
born of numbers and co-ordination ; and peace means 
plenty. 

We speak of the ugliness of cities — the beauty of the 
country. As the garden to the desert, as the palace to 
the quarry, should be the city to the country. Have 
not our highest and most cultivated thinkers, poets, 
artists, sages, found " the most beautiful of all earthly 
places" in a city — Venice crowned Queen of the Adri- 
atic and celebrated in a thousand songs and stories. 
Was it not a city, the New Jerusalem — which the 
prophet saw descending out of Heaven to usher in the 
reign of peace on earth ? What order of beauty it is 
that belongs to our best thought of the city is beauti- 
fully put in a poem called City's Beauty, by Mrs. Char- 
lotte Stetson. 

city's bkauty. 

Fair, O fair are the hills uncrowned, 

Only wreathed and garlanded 

With the soft clouds overhead, 
With the waving streams of rain ; 
Fair in golden sunlight drowned, 

Bathed and buried in the bright 

Warm luxuriance of light — 
Fair the hills without a stain. 



38 Household Economics. 

Fairer far the "hills should stand 
Crowned with a city's halls, 
With the glimmer of white walls, 

With the climbing grace of towers ; 

Fair with great fronts tall and grand, 
Stately streets that meet the sky, 
Lovely roof-lines, low and high — 

Fairer for the days and hours. 

Woman's beauty fades and flies, 

In the passing of the years, 

With the falling of the tears, 
With the lines of toil and stress ; 
City's beauty never dies — 

Never while her people know 

How to love and honor so 
Her immortal loveliness. 

When we speak of The City Beautiful, it is not a 
series of farm-houses, or an expanse of prairie of which 
we think — nor a collection of cottages each with its 
traditional vine, nor is it a collection of suburban villas. 
All these are protoplasmic, so to speak. The city is 
ganglion, and means the work of the ganglion. Where 
great public uses are to be served, certain essentials of 
fine architecture are at once possible, — size, durability, 
adaptation of form to function and character, and full 
provision for multiple occupancy. 

The passage from the hut to the great modern hotel ; 
from the tent to the tenement, — means the passage 
from savagery to civilization. 

There are cities so fair that he who looks upon them 
feels the heart swell and the eyes fill with delight. 
" See Damascus and die ! " the word of the prophet to 
whom it gave that conception of the heaven most to be 
desired, has transferred itself to modern phrase, and 
repeats itself in Florence ; above all, since in the Italian 



The House. . 39 

cities of our time beauty has had a larger share than 
in any other day or land since Greece gave us its 
highest type. The City Beautiful is for us still to come, 
— that ' ' dream city, ' ' of the Great Fair foreshadowing 
what it is to be. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RKFKRENCKS. 

The House That Jill Built, by B. C. Gardner. 

Homes a?id How to Make Them, by B. C. Gardner. 

Villages and Village Life, by Nathaniel C. Eggleston. 

Hygeia : A Model of City Health, by Dr. Benjamin \V. Rich- 
ardson. 

The City zvithotit a Church, by Henry Drummond. 

The Ancient City, by Coulanges. 

The Easiest Way, by Helen Campbell. Chap. I. 

An Ideal Kitchen, by Maria Parloa. 

"Health and Comfort in Houses," by J. P. Hayward, Popular 
Science Monthly, vol. iv., p. 69. 




CHAPTER III. 

THE BUILDING OE THE HOUSE. 

The Place of Architecture in Household Economics — Relation 
to other Arts — Primitive Architecture and its Development : 
Domestic, Civic, and Ecclesiastic — The City and the King 
— Ancient Architecture, Public and Private — Herculaneum 
and Pompeii — Character of Oriental Home — Effect of House 
on its Occupants — The House and the Family — Confusion 
of Domestic with Industrial Architecture — Rooms and their 
Relation— Existing Conditions of Domestic Architecture in 
Europe and America — Built to Live in and Built to Sell — 
Limitation of the Private Home — Gridiron Topography — 
Need of Combination and Juxtaposition — Essentiality of 
the Separate Home— Our Present Trend. 



WHAT the house is to the household has been 
indicated in the preceding pages ; but there 
is room for further explanation as to the 
architecture thereof. The size and shape of your man- 
sion are of as much importance as the size and shape 
of your body ; and beyond that, the materials and 
methods of building are of as much importance as the 
quality of bone and muscle and their just combination. 
The architecture of a race, as every other art, mirrors 
its character for good and ill, for advance, stay, and 
retrogression. 

We have been too long accustomed to detach soul 

40 



The Building of the House. 41 

from body and to claim that their progress was not only 
independent but diametrically opposed. A sane mind 
in a sound body is as truly connected as a sane house- 
hold in a sound house, — not more so. 

National character, modified by conditions, may be 
read in the nation's architecture ; and in our American 
architecture, be its conditions what they may, the read- 
ing is but faintly hopeful. So far, condition is more 
apparent than character. Our haste, our wide inven- 
tion and narrow execution, our short-sighted economy 
in essentials and low-bred profusion of cheap ornament, 
our laughable ignorance of the ABC of true art, — all 
these may be seen in our architecture ; but there is 
much more noble material in the American character 
which is yet to be seen. Right here, I wish to draw 
attention to a parallel form of art, and show how evil 
in one direction works evil in another. Women are 
not yet largely architects, but they are largely crit- 
ics, potential purchasers, and what is even more, edu- 
cators of purchasers. Now while our women follow 
the lead of fashion in dress as unintelligently as they 
do, that characteristic of sheep-like submission will 
distinguish their children, and the educational influ- 
ence of such a low taste keeps back the art sense in 
their families. Therefore do we go on following fashion 
in architecture as blindly as in dress, and fail to develop 
that firm, clear, intelligent taste which would soon 
line our streets with beauty instead of with blatant 
ugliness. 

Architecture is one of the first home arts ; quite the 
first to reach any eminence. It was the first expression 
of the social spirit ; weapon, dish, and tool were largely 
personal ; the temple early grew as the common cover- 
ing of many souls and the expression of a great idea. 



42 Household Economics. 

Sculpture is the direct outcome of architecture, and 
was long used only in connection with it. Painting 
began upon its walls, and still is hung there, although 
now removable. And all the other arts are traceable 
to architecture, directly or indirectly, — together with 
every other form of human progress, — in that the shel- 
ter of roof and wall is needed by them all, and the 
relative effect of structure good and bad is always 
shown in them. 

Races vary in the pre-eminence of one and another 
art ; but a certain proportion must be maintained. 
That Italy, mother of arts, shows masterpieces in them 
all, proves only how inevitably they help each other. 

Of the three divisions of architecture in all ages, — do- 
mestic, civic, and ecclesiastic, — domestic was latest in 
its development, and ecclesiastic has maintained its 
precedence down to modern times, the civic gaining in 
importance and in beauty as nations made their slow 
and hesitating progress toward civilization. Back in 
the Stone age, the cave-dweller piled up mounds of 
stone as an altar to unknown forces before which he 
trembled, and finally turned them into altars on which 
he laid sacrifices to the same dread power, only to be 
propitiated by blood. Over graves of kindred he 
reared the same sort of piles, as memorial and as pro- 
tection against evil spirits, — -and thus began the first 
temples and the first tombs. The oldest known struc- 
tures on the earth, the pyramids which for five thou- 
sand years have held their place, are simply monuments 
to the kings who sought thus to make their names 
immortal. 

With the hollowing out of tombs in rocks came 
sculpture as a decoration, — and here too Kgypt gives 
Us our first records, stamping ineffaceably on every 



The Building of the House, 43 

inch of the material in which they wrought, their 
character as a people. Their art differs from that of 
all other nations, since having in the beginning formu- 
lated certain rules, they adhered to them rigidly. As a 
rule, when a nation rises in freedom and power, the 
arts rise with it ; and if it falls, its art is lowered with 
it. Fourteen hundred years before Christ, Egypt in 
her mysterious Sphinx reached the highest point of 
development, and from that period on not a line 
changed. Kings and priests absolute despots ; a peo- 
ple under complete subjection ; every artist and worker 
the subject of immutable law, — all this produced one 
unchanging type. Added to this was the minute sub- 
division of labor, which then, as now, prevented any 
full and harmonious development of power. In their 
wall paintings, for example, one man prepared the 
surface, a second drew the outline, a third hollowed 
these outlines for sunk relief, and a fourth laid on the 
color. Then, too, the artist in Egypt was looked upon 
merely as an artisan and classed in the lowest rank. 
Art was chosen not from natural bent, but because the 
son followed the employment of the father. Not one 
has left a footprint that can be said to be strictly his 
own ; and thus in temple and tomb, palace and private 
dwelling, the same sombre, heavy, restricted forms are 
all that we find. Assyria, India, China, may vary in 
form, but the type of work is the same, and undeviat- 
ing, fixed regularity is the characteristic of each and all. 

" Eastern art held by mathematical or mechanical proportion 
exclusively," writes Walter Pater ; "the Greek apprehends of 
it as the main truth that it is a living organism with freedom 
of movement, and hence the infinite possibilities of motion and 
of expression by motion with which the imagination credits 
the higher sort of Greek sculpture. ... In the works of 



44 Household Economics. 

the Asiatic tradition, in the marbles of Nineveh, for instance, 
the form of man is inadequate and below the measure of per- 
fection attained there in the lowest representation of the lower 
forms of life ; just as in the lively reflective art of Japan, so 
lovely in its reproduction of flower and bird, the human form 
comes almost as a caricature, or is at least untouched by any 
higher ideal. To that Asiatic tradition then, with its perfect 
craftmanship, its consummate skill in design, its power of hand, 
the Dorian, the European, the true Hellenic influence brought 
a revelation of the mind and body of man." 

Why have I quoted this ? Because it is the word of 
a great art critic, who saw, like the modern historian 
of art, that only when the higher evolution of man 
became a part of the national thought, could art take 
its true place. Egypt and all that background of vast 
monarchies and dynasties had temples, palaces, tombs ; 
but they had practically no homes. The myriads of 
human beings swarming like ants about the vast con- 
structions whose building is still wrapped in mystery, 
ate as they worked and slept where they fell ; or, if of a 
slightly higher class, returned to hut or low dwelling. 

Through the Greek came the first possibilities of 
domestic architecture, and Grecian influence made that 
of Rome, and even affected that remote India, from 
which they in turn borrowed the best it had to give. 
But the life of the Greek was chiefly public, and his 
highest efforts in art were given to the temples of his 
gods and the buildings of the state. The ancient 
Greeks, according to Plato, had four wishes : ist, To 
be healthy ; 2d, To be beautiful ; 3d, To be rich hon- 
estly ; 4th, To be gay and merry with one's friends. 
To this last end, the dining-halls of their simple houses 
grew more and more elaborate in ornamentation. 

The Greek, however, had no pride in the appearance 
of his dwelling, and the banquet hall soon depended 



The Building of the House. . 45 

upon beauty of line and perfection of finish in structure 
rather than on any gorgeousness of furnishing. The 
Roman, whose conception of art came through the 
conquest of the Greeks, tended, on the contrary, more 
and more to extremes of luxury. The remains of 
Pompeii stand to us as their highest ideal. The Ro- 
man dwelling-house was in the beginning identical 
with that of Ktruria and of all central Italy. It had 
Grecian characteristics, but the Italian atrium had no 
columnar supports for the roof, and it remained in use 
even after the Greek peristyle had been generally 
adopted in more public edifices. The house of Pansa 
at Pompeii is the one most generally familiar to us all 
and of the highest type of Roman domestic architec- 
ture. It includes both varieties of court, both atrium 
and peristyle being surrounded by chambers, and those 
of the upper story, with part of the lower, being lighted 
only through doors opening from the inner courts, and 
used as bedrooms, bare and undecorated. The larger 
halls were often vaulted and columns were introduced, 
not for support but as decorative members. Magnifi- 
cent dining-rooms, great libraries, and galleries of pic- 
tures became prominent features, and many men of 
condition had private basilicas, or halls of justice, 
where private councils were held on public and private 
matters. The women's apartments had a court of 
their own, and while the sleeping-rooms were seldom 
much more than cubicles, there were offices of many 
orders, — spinning, weaving, and all household indus- 
tries going on under the eye of the mistress. The city, 
then as now, summed up the best things the people 
knew and formed the background for the stately and 
noble civic life. Without it, the king would have 
been practically impossible, since from its focussion of 



46 Household Economics. 

the resources of the country at its back his revenues 
were drawn, his armies recruited, and the progress of 
the state assured. To make the city beautiful was 
part of his kingly prerogative. Each city sought to 
rival its neighbor in the beauty of its temples and 
statues and public buildings. Bach city entertained 
at public expense the artist, sculptor, painter, or archi- 
tect, who brought with him a great name earned by 
noble work. " The artist is the only wise man," was 
a saying of Socrates, and the statue of the artist was 
placed near those of the gods. Neither fancy nor fash- 
ion could determine his reputation, but only the for- 
mally delivered judgment of the wisest men. Compare 
this with the standing in our own country of the best 
names we own, and you will have one reason why 
architecture for America, like other arts, is still in its 
infancy. 

For the Greek, and in time for all who imitated him, 
the commonest things were made beautiful. As Pater 
well puts it : 

"For them, every aspect of life is beautified by cunning 
hands. The thrones, coffers, couches of curious carpentery, 
are studded with bossy ornaments of precious metals effectively 
disposed, or inlaid with stained ivory, or blue cyanus, or amber, 
or pale amber-like gold. The surfaces of the stone conduits, 
the public washing-troughs, the ramparts on which the weary 
soldiers rest themselves, are fair and smooth ; all the fine quali- 
ties in color and texture of woven stuff are carefully noted ; 
the fineness, closeness, softness, pliancy, gloss, the whiteness, 
or nectar-like tints in which the weaver delights to work and 
to weave the sea-purple threads, is an appropriate function of 
queens and noble women. The very gods came down to help 
them make these things of beauty ; yet every one of them 
ministered only to simple and healthy requirements, and there 
was no ostentation, no extravagance, no undue luxury, no 
vulgarity." 



The Building of the House. 47 

Thus it came to pass that the noblest architecture the 
world has known grew simply and naturally as a tree 
grows, and all the people knew its meaning, and hon- 
ored him who built, no less than him who painted, or 
who added sculpture as the final touch of beauty. 

As to the Oriental home at its best, it has some of 
the characteristics of the Greek, its open court and 
fountain, its narrow sleeping-chambers, and its specific 
apartments for women. All this, as it arranges itself 
for Oriental nations, you may see in turning over the 
pages of the authorities in the history of architecture, 
— sumptuousness of decoration being as certain as was 
the lack of most of the arrangements that to us mean 
comfort. That word belongs more truly to the Anglo- 
Saxon than to any other race, and has in his dictionary 
so large a place that it has left little room for beauty. 
One feature of this Oriental home, especially that of 
Palestine and Arabia, we may, however, well note, — 
and that is the life of the housetop, including the 
sleeping under the open sky. America has a summer 
hardly less torrid than the torrid zone itself, and though 
the suggestion will send a thrill of horror to the order 
of mind that declaims against " night air," we know 
that night air is all the kind of air that night can offer 
us, and that it must, in the nature of things, be better 
than a vacuum, or the deadly poison thrown off by 
human lungs. Sleeping in the open air is one of the 
prescriptions for consumption, and if it cures that dis- 
ease, as we know in many cases it has, why should it 
not also prevent ? It would be possible to reserve and 
arrange a flat, well guarded portion of the roof for 
this summer sleeping in hammock or on light cot, with 
an adjustable awning in case of rain. I have tried it 
during a New Jersey summer, to my own happiness 



48 Household Economics. 

and comfort, and whoever lies down under the hush 
and the pervading quiet of the open sky drinks in a 
calm and refreshment all healing in its action and never 
to be forgotten. Take this hint then from the wise 
Oriental and add a new pleasure to living. 

You will notice how among these ancient races there 
was little household architecture, because there was 
little household life. The Roman had more family life 
than the Greek and more family architecture. 

The modern family is the body of which our new 
word ' ■ home ' ' expresses the spirit, and of which our 
house is the outer shell. The intense development of 
this family spirit and its transmission of external or- 
ganism, through primogeniture, give us a continuous 
family spirit wherein the generations are but links — 
not breaks — and where the transmitted dwelling-place 
becomes so identified with the spirit that the word 
"house" comes to stand for both. "The House of 
Usher ' ' has a double meaning, and all through modern 
literature you will find the same use of the word, — a 
strong and true use. 

It is a good growth, and means a nobler and more 
durable domestic architecture than has ever obtained 
when the house was built only for the transient use of 
a few people in one generation. 

As to the existing conditions of domestic architect- 
ure in Kurope and America, the advantage is in some 
points on the European side ; on others, with us. The 
European house, as a rule, represents good design, 
solidity of construction, beauty of finish, deadened floors, 
so that the upper rooms are not at the mercy of noises 
from the lower ones, and a general sense of harmony 
and proportion. On the other hand, the conveni- 
ences which all town-bred people and most villagers 



The Btdlding of the House. 49 

in America take for granted are in the towns and vil- 
lages of Kurope almost unknown. I have in mind 
one of the most beautiful of homes in which I lived 
for months in Germany — a mansion most fair to look 
upon, with a staff of six well trained servants and a 
delightfully arranged series of rooms. Beauty was in 
every one of them, but the house had no bath-room 
and no decent system of drainage ; its water supply 
was defective and of suspicious quality ; and though a 
Heidelberg winter means snow and ice, there were no 
fireplace grates and no provision for heating beyond 
porcelain stoves. Personally I prefer these stoves to 
the furnaces which dry every tissue and are a steady 
invitation and welcome to grip and bronchitis ; but 
there is a happy mean of which the Continent of 
Kurope knows nothing. 

The German kitchen, and that of Holland, is a de- 
light with its wainscot of tiles, its beautiful order of 
arrangement and detail in store-room and pantry, and 
its systematized methods of work. But until we reach 
Kngland, we do not, as a rule, find in southern or 
in far northern Kurope what the American counts as 
essential to comfort in daily living. 

In Kngland, domestic service is of so high a grade 
that life seems easy, but whoever looks beneath the 
service finds work done under conditions that the 
American servant would regard as intolerable. The 
Knglish kitchen of the cities is even more depressing 
than the American basement, and the use of soft coal 
as fuel makes an eternal conflict with saucepans. The 
average builder meets the desire of the average cook, 
who clings obstinately to his open grate and side oven, 
and who sniffs suspiciously at the new forms of French 
and American ranges and stoves, which with us are a 



50 Household Economics. 

regular part of the newer plumbing methods and built 
into the house as a matter of course. The offices of a 
great Knglish house make a colony in themselves, from 
the housekeeper's or house-steward's private sitting- 
room with all its dependencies of store-rooms and pan- 
tries, to the servants' dining-room and special quarters. 
But flagged passages, damp walls, and no provision for 
heating, save here and there an open grate, make a 
comfortless impression and send a chill to the very 
marrow of the American housekeeper. The newer 
houses in England — the fine ones of this generation 
— are ideal in beauty and comfort. Mrs. H. R. Haweis 
in Beautiful Homes gives us interesting descriptions of 
a number of these, among them Alma Tadema's, one 
of the most beautiful houses of modern times. The 
cheap house built to rent is of much the same order of 
offensiveness as its American prototype, and far less 
comfortable in its appointments. Much of the modern 
Knglish building is as inferior in its own way as is our 
own. 



" The old brick mansions of the early Georgian era, although 
unpretentious in appearance, were at least as strong as good 
burnt clay and duly mixed honest mortar could make them ; 
the walls were of substantial thickness ; the timber was well 
seasoned and of ample dimensions ; the foundations were well 
laid ; the roof was of convenient pitch and covered with the 
best of slates ; the doors were securely hung, and a true lintel, 
or a real arch, with properly tapering ends, was turned over 
every window. The woodwork was excellent in workmanship 
and frequently spirited in detail ; while the wrought iron intro- 
duced to decorate their facades in the shape of gates and area 
railings, was designed in thorough accordance with the nature 
and properties of the material employed." — Hints on Household 
Taste, by Sir Charles Eastlake, p. 8. 



The Building of the House. 5 1 

This is the English house as Sir Charles Kastlake 
describes it, and having described the rise and progress 
of stucco, he goes on with his arraignment of the house 
of to-day : 

" Plaster brackets support plaster pediments; stucco bas-re- 
liefs are raised upon a stucco ground ; the whole front is a sham 
from the basement storey to the attic. But murder will out, 
and by degrees this prodigious imposition begins to reveal it- 
self. A mouldy green dampness exudes from the hastily con- 
structed walls. The ill-fated stucco blisters up and peels off in 
all directions. Ugly fissures appear on the house-front caused 
by some settlement arising from bad foundations. The wretched 
parodies on carved work become chipped away by accident or 
crumble to fragments under the influence of the weather. It 
had only a meretricious excellence when fresh from the paint- 
er's hands. A few years have made it a dingy abode ; a few 
more years will make it a ghastly ruin." 

As to the interior, he tells us : 

" Floor boards come up unexpectedly after separating from 
the skirting ; doors shrink so that they cannot be securely fast- 
ened ; window sashes warp and become immovable ; marble 
chimney-pieces are gradually detached from the wall behind 
them. The external disorder only foreshadows the internal dis- 
comfort. . . . It is unpleasant to live within ugly walls ; it 
is still more unpleasant to live within unstable walls ; but to be 
obliged to live within a tenement which is both unstable and 
ugly is disagreeable in tenfold degree. " 

Such houses as these one sees by the hundred in the 
outskirts of London— a province in itself — and in the 
manufacturing towns. It should be added, however, 
that the number of new ones built on the same plan 
has been materially lessened since this protest was 
made, no man having spoken with more distinct effect 
than has its author. And there is so much that is no- 
ble and beautiful that one can well ignore the mean and 



52 Household Economics. 

poor. As a whole, domestic architecture in Europe 
pleases the eye, — in many cases delights it, and till you 
have wandered in old cathedral towns of England, or 
in the quaint cities of the Continent, you will not know 
what fascination may lie in brick and stone and iron. 
European travel is doing much for all forms of art 
among us, and we assimilate so quickly that in a time 
not distant we shall have American architecture of 
which we need not be ashamed. 

In short, with all our glaring defects in taste, and 
something worse than this — the actual dishonesty of 
much of our building in general flimsiness, use of poor 
material, and hasty finish, there is no other country 
where the population as a whole is so well housed. 
The American mechanic, in Philadelphia, for example, 
gets more comfort in return for his money than the Eng- 
lish worker ever knows, and the standard with us 
is a steadily rising one. 

The possibility of something beside the rectangular 
method is dawning upon American city architects, and 
we have in the city of Brooklyn an entire block owned 
by Mr. Alfred White, who built the first model tene- 
ments for that city. This block is built about an open 
court, with fountains, trees, and shrubs. Every modern 
improvement has been used, always in simplest forms, 
but of perfect material. No millionaire's home has 
more thorough finish, and building a block at once has 
been found to so reduce the expense for each house that 
the landlord is enabled to rent them for less than the 
same grade of individual houses bring and yet receive 
an equal percentage on the original cost. The union 
of numbers who guarantee to take and keep in order a 
block of this description lessens immensely the cost for 
each family, and gives an order of comfort and finish 



The Building of the House. 53 

impossible in the ordinary workman's house. Built to 
live in and built to sell are phrases that have long car- 
ried to us all the sense of comfort on the one hand ; of 
cheapness and consequent unending irritation and 
discomfort on the other. 

The great apartment houses of our cities are demon- 
strating how much comfort can be increased by the 
lessening of labor, a common heating apparatus and 
plumbing system doing away at once with one of the 
heaviest labors of the private house, — the lifelong 
wrestle with coal and ashes. When the time comes 
that shall bring a better system of planning and solid 
construction, each family will be as free from noise and 
the other infelicities of * ' flat ' ' life as is the dweller in 
the best private house ; but until women study this 
matter and bring trained intelligence and a recon- 
structed sense of what a house should mean to bear 
upon this most vital of needs, we shall still have to 
submit to a myriad of unnecessary evils. 

To build properly, we must know not only the 
underlying essentials already mentioned, but also what 
order of architecture best suits your own place in life 
and the spot on which the house must stand. Often 
one sees a house stately and fine in plan and demand- 
ing as its setting the sweep of green turf and groups of 
trees, but set down in a space so narrow and with sur- 
roundings so absolutely inappropriate that the whole 
thing is dwarfed and belittled. 

The house that is charming in a southern climate 
becomes a terror in a northern one. A hill requires a 
different structure from that in a valley. A prairie 
covered with make-believe wooden castles, Swiss cha- 
lets, and Italian villas makes us the laughing-stock 
of any intelligent foreigner. 



54 Household JSconomtcs. 

Judicious landscape-gardening goes hand in hand 
with architecture. To plant at the north for protection 
against wind and storm, to know what type of shrub 
will best bring out some special point in niche or em- 
brasure and in turn gain advantage for each character- 
istic of its own, to see every possibility of the ground 
from which the house should grow, — these are parts 
of the foundation of knowledge required. 

There is a house on one of the most beautiful roads 
in the United States,— the Jerusalem road between 
Nantasket and Cohasset, Mass., the sea at one side, 
the piling ledges and scattered rocks with their growth 
of vine and shrub seeming to defy the builder on the 
other. Out of one of these ledges a house has grown, 
for where ledge ends and house begins one can hardly 
say. The architect studied every inch of it. Nature 
had made a scheme of color and decoration as well as 
a foundation no man could better. Of this same stone 
he made the house, laying carefully aside and pro- 
tecting every trailing blackberry vine, every clump of 
sweet fern. Wide-spreading, sturdy, and strong it 
grew, balconies here and there, a sheltered sunny 
piazza, a living-room in more senses than one, and the 
overhanging roof as perfectly fitted a shield and pro- 
tection as the brooding wings of a mother hen. 
Even the front steps were not so much steps as a judi- 
cious selection of rises in the ledge, — and at every 
jutting point, trailed and clasped and lived its own 
life unharmed, all the delicate wild growth that had 
been and that remained an integral and inseparable 
part of the beauty all may see. 

Now the prairie has no such opportunity, it is true, 
but it has its own possibilities, and judicious planting 
of quick-growing trees will do for it all that is neces- 



The Building of the House. 55 

sary, and take at once from village or town that bare 
wooden ugliness that depresses the dweller therein no 
less surely than it does the stranger passing through it. 

If a group of friends who proposed to build on such 
ground pooled their resources and started in with a 
definite conception of what plan of planting and build- 
ing would produce the best results, the very fact of a 
united purpose would give a different expression to the 
whole. As it is, a town is a jumble of incoherencies. 
The wealthier people plant themselves in the best 
places, — and when it is discovered that parks and 
boulevards, and free access to a lake or river, for in- 
stance, are required as public needs, every foot of 
ground is already appropriated, and the members of 
the city council gaze upon each other with distracted 
eyes and wonder why nobody thought about it in the 
beginning. 

With such study as will be done, this sort of obtuse- 
ness will speedily end. In learning what beauty of 
form and design the past has held, we shall at once be 
guarded from any of the vulgarity and limitations 
which distinguish much of our American architecture. 
The study of plans of beautiful houses, the working 
out of our own thought, will be not only enlargement 
of perception but also the happiness that comes from 
any genuine step forward. The work involved is one 
of the most delightful features of a course like this, 
and will make of each student a missionary bearing 
the standard of beauty and preaching its meaning and 
its use in that larger life the higher education is to 
bring to all and for all. 

Of the various styles, you will notice that I have 
said no more than a word here and there* In these 
limits, it is impossible to do more. Any good history 



56 Household Economics. 

of architecture will give you divisions and illustrative 
plates, and in a full course these would all be studied 
with reference to their applicability to our own climate 
and mode of living. The Greek, the Saracenic and 
Moorish, the Romanesque, the Gothic, — each has its 
meaning, ethically as well as artistically and histori- 
cally — but details must bide their time. 

One thing must be held in mind by the student of 
architecture from the household point of view. All ap- 
plied art is modified by use ; and architecture is an 
applied art in its very essence. The use of the struc- 
ture determines its character from the beginning, lim- 
its its extent, and modifies its beauty. We feel this 
somewhat, even in America, and a school-house can be 
distinguished from a penitentiary by a person of any 
education. The private house, in its essential pur- 
poses, carries its architectural limitations, and only 
vulgar ignorance will build beyond them. 

First, the private house is the enclosure and expres- 
sion of the private family. It must express personal- 
ity, — a small compound personality a little bigger than 
that of one individual, but not often beyond that of a 
dozen. Personality is always limited by good taste. 

Second, the private house is limited by private means, 
a serious consideration at present. 

Third, it is limited by its uses. What is a private 
home for ? Fundamentally, to sleep in, to hide in — a 
place of shelter, safety, peace, and rest. This pre- 
vents too great a giddiness of expression ; the home 
should express quiet and retirement. Then it is for 
the further purposes of eating in, cooking in, and 
cleaning in. 

Now a sleeping-house, a dormitory, is one thing ; an 
eating-house, a refectory, is another. So a washing- 



The Building of the House. 57 

house, a lavatory, is one thing, and a cooking-house, a 
cookatory, is quite another. Add to these the require- 
ments of such contradictory functions as the nursing 
of the sick, the care of the very young and of the very 
aged, and the entertainment of guests, and you see 
that the limitations of the private house present no 
small problem to the architect, and prevent any very 
high beauty by their multiplicity and discord. It is a 
compound, at best, varying in the occasional predomi- 
nance of one or another function ; and it is largely be- 
cause of this incessant production of compromises that 
domestic architecture is at so low an ebb to-day. 

All great art must be public ; that is it must pre- 
sent large ideals, generalities, types. The church, the 
palace, the theatre, the bath, — any building with a 
specific purpose, — represents one leading thought, and 
its architecture may be noble. The castle was nobler 
than the house not because it was larger, but because 
it represented one main idea, that of defence, and all 
other needs were subservient to that. 

And this limitation to domestic architecture is that 
the infinite repetition of the same kind of building, all 
small and indeterminate of aspect ; and all, by their 
functional necessities, in regular connection with a 
common means of communication, requires that our 
cities shall be frowsy checker-boards, stubble-fields of 
chimneys, wastes of monotony that is not regular and 
of eccentricity without distinction. Our cities are 
gridironed with rectangular streets to feed the indus- 
tries of the private house ; and the higher needs of hu- 
manity, space, air, light, view, grandeur, beauty, and 
peace — are all lost sight of in the patient struggle of 
architect and engineer to meet the needs of this in- 
numerable multitude of cook-, eat-, sleep-, nurse-, 



58 Household Economics. 

wash-, and entertain-atories ; such an one, for instance 
as Tuxedo. 

One of the crying abuses of this system, — I use the 
word with painful literalness, — is the lack of proper 
accommodation for children in the private house. This 
may have a strange sound to you, but it is true. Only 
the rich can afford nurseries. Most children live 
"don't "-bounded lives, their needs unnoticed in the 
conflicting interests of the homes. They fall down stairs. 
Why surround our babies with zigzag precipices ? They 
fall out of windows and into tubs. They are forever 
pinching their little fingers in doors, bumping against 
tables, tumbling over chairs, coming to all manner of 
grief in the daily stress of manifold household indus- 
tries, and they are lucky if they live to the age when a 
separate room can be afforded them. 

Now, while the absolute necessity for a separate 
home for each family remains undisputed, — and no 
house was ever big enough for two ! — there is no reason 
why the buildings which shelter those families should 
not be so juxtaposed and related as to make possible a 
true and noble architecture, and give far better accom- 
modation than we have at present for every household 
need. Juxtaposed our houses are now, in the choked 
city streets, — driven together like the inimical Butcher 
and Beaver in Lewis Carrol's classic : 

" Until wholly from nervousness not from good will, 
They marched along shoulder to shoulder." 

Our houses hunch and hate each other in jumbled 
rows, stand in chain-gangs of blocks and flats — turn 
blind resentful eyes to blank walls of smothering near- 
ness, crowd and jam each other's lives out in a hollow 
square that fronts the world with dull defiance of pre- 



The Building of the House. 59 

tended separateness, and lose all privacy in common 
exposure of huddled and defenceless back-yards. We 
are not private or separate in any decent sense at pres- 
ent. But we shall be when the architectural genius of 
the age gives us great clustering palaces ; when the 
private houses ray out in wings and ells of lawn-ringed 
separateness, all its industries subservient and reduced 
to order, and the whole great building expressing the 
thought of human living at its best. 

To this end is our house-building now trending by 
devious ways, but toward a result of greatly needed 



good. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY AND R^F^R^NC^S, 



Tuthill's History of Architecture ; Chap, XIV. 

Ferguson's History of Architecture. 

Hates und Halle, by Dr. Conrad lyange. P. 12. 

Leben der Griechen und Romer, by Ernst Kuhl und Koner, 

1893. 
Das Haus, p. 558. 

Pericles, by Evelyn Abbott ; " Greek Home Life." Chap. XVII. 
Landscape Gardening , by S. W. Parsons. 
Discourses on Architecture, by Viollet Le Due. 
The Habitations of Man, by Viollet I^e Due. 
Our Colonial Homes, by Samuel Adams Drake. 
Rural Homes, by Gervase Wheeler. 
Some Account of Domestic Architechire in England from the 

Conquest to the End of the Thirteenth Century, by T. 

Hudson Trower. 
"House Building," by Helen Churchill. Chap. XIV., in The 

Woman'' s Book. 
American Interiors, by Charles Wyllys. 
Architecture for General Students, by Caroline W. Horton. 



CHAPTER IV. 



ORGANISM OF THE HOUSE. 

Structural Necessities— Vital Processes of the House— Air, 
Light, Heat, Water, Ventilation — Troglodytes, Ancient and 
Modern — Proportion of Air to Occupancy — Air and Women 
— Air and Boys — "Night Air." — Ventilation, Public and 
Private— Our Schools — Light ; Its Influence on the Body 
and Spirit— Sun-baths— The Artificial Light Habit— Heat, 
Natural and Artificial— Methods of Application — Plumbing 
— Water, Clean and Unclean — Drainage, Private and Pub- 
lic ; its Evolution, History, Present Methods, and Tend- 
encies. 

ACCUSTOMED as we are to considering houses 
from the inside, as conveniences — or incon- 
veniences — for living ; and from the outside as 
things to be looked at, or, more often, to be looked 
away from, — this thought of the house as an organism 
with structural necessities and vital processes is per- 
haps an unusual one to present. But a house is a 
created thing. It is born of the brain and hand of 
man ; it lives by his care, and dies when its time is 
come, the quicker if man's care is withdrawn from it. 
This we know practically in the fact that a house 
keeps in repair better when occupied, that a rentless 
tenant is better than none, and that large buildings 
when vacated are supplied with ' * care-takers ' ' to par- 
tially inhabit them. 

60 



Organism of the House. . 61 

As a matter of more careful philosophy, the house is 
a combination of matter, in artificial forms, for artificial 
uses, and needs artificial care to maintain it. It sus- 
tains changes, mechanical and chemical, like all organ- 
isms ; but, unlike what we commonly call a ' ' livi?ig 
organism," it has no vital processes of its own to offset 
those of waste and decay. Man is the soul of the 
house, and man's occupancy must supply the vitality 
to keep the house alive. 

To prevent the too rapid ravages of decomposition 
by air and water, the house must be aired and sunned 
and internally heated, and intelligent care used to 
repair accidental injuries, as well as those caused by 
essential decay. The internal organism of the house 
involves all these considerations : It must be so win- 
dowed as to admit light to all parts, lest harm be done 
unseen ; there must be means of access to and exami- 
nation of all parts ; and there should be means of heat- 
ing all parts with some approach to equability. 

A well-cared-for house may be lived in longer and 
more comfortably than may a neglected one. Yet this 
is but a minor consideration, compared with the needs 
of the living beings inside — the detachments of human- 
ity using that shelter in common. 

First in importance in this regard is the supplying 
of the house with air, — the great question of ventila- 
tion. To understand it, we must go back for some 
distance, — to the cave and hollow tree. The first use 
of a separate bit of the universe, pre-empted by some 
ranging bear, was for shelter ; shelter from the cold, 
the wet, and the enemy. A small place was best for 
all these purposes. He could warm and dry it by his 
own interior, portable furnace, and he could defend a 
small doorway better than a large one. The hibernat- 



62 House hold Economics. 

ing creature needed very little air, and the ordinary 
sleeping creature not much more. They had air 
enough out-doors all day. They went in there to rest, 
lungs and all. So we find very little demand for ven- 
tilation from animal, savage, peasant, or low type of 
civilian. The primitive instinct is still strong, and 
intelligence has not appeared to combat it. 

The great reason for ventilation in the modern house 
is that we live in it all the time. We no longer live 
out-of-doors and merely go in the house to sleep, — 
though our primitive-natured children still like to do 
so. We live and work mainly under shelter, and 
therefore need that shelter ventilated. The need for 
air is as definite as the need of food ; and the result of 
foul air is as certain as that of foul food. This we 
know in a certain dim way, as we know the distance of 
the fixed stars ; but we do not act upon it. It would 
be hard to find a better instance of our utterly discon- 
nected march of progress than the calm way in which 
we send ahead little skirmish lines of education, — per- 
ceiving this, believing that, admitting the other ; and 
all the while living in the dark ages. We have pro- 
gressed from the filth and brutality of the savage in 
many ways, but in some ways not at all. Our eating 
habits, for instance, are tolerably refined. We like our 
food to be of good quality, pure and clean in material 
and preparation, regularly and amply provided, and, 
served to us individually on clean plates. 

But our breathing habits ! We are content to 
breathe air that the savage would scorn to stay in by 
day, air insufficient in quantity, irregular in supply, 
and mixed with all manner of artificial impurities, — 
mingled moreover in charming catholicity — all of us 
serenely partaking of one-another's breath with a cour- 



Organism of the Hoztse. 63 

teous disregard of its manifold circulation through our 
denied and outraged lungs. 

The troglodyte of the dim beginning was not more 
foul in habit than is the troglodyte of our dim present ; 
and his developement is kept low by the same limita- 
tion. 

The more a house is lived in, and the more the peo- 
ple who live in it, the more it is a place of industry 
and enjoyment as well as of shelter and rest, — the 
more it needs air ; and as a house is not open to the 
winds of heaven, its ventilation must be artificially 
provided. 

Right here is where the position of woman has had 
a marked effect on the health of the race. Speaking 
broadly, she has about half as much fresh air as is 
enjoyed by her outgoing companion, with the same 
degree of consequence to herself and children as if 
she had half as much food as she required. Not only 
is her air insufficient, it is bad air necessarily, — and 
commensurately injurious. 

Nowadays, when tomboydom is recognized, and to 
gad abroad is no longer a reproach, this curse is lifted 
in large measure ; but time was when it was said : ' ' A 
woman should leave her home but three times — 
when she is christened, when she is married, and when 
she is buried." Also : " The woman, the cat, and the 
chimney should never leave home." 

Perhaps that answerless problem of perplexed 
motherhood — ' ' How to keep the boys at home, ' ' might 
find partial solution from this point of view. Give 
the boys air, good air and plenty of it. Sturdy little 
animals with racing blood and vigorous lungs, no 
wonder they "want to go out-doors!" And it is 
largely because of the years of association of out-of- 



64 Houseliold Economics. 

doors with its clean wealth of air and accompanying 
strength and pleasure, and in-doors with its enforced 
detention and foul suffocation to the poor little lungs, 
that makes the older boy so instinctively refuse to 
stay at home. We even sometimes compel our chil- 
dren to stay in the house as a punishment \ — a colossal 
mistake for a home builder. 

Our houses ought to be as pure and fresh in air as 
they try to be in food, — and they will when women 
learn household economics. 

Side by side with even the highest evolution walks 
prejudice ; the ghost of a past that will not down and 
that perpetually modifies action. It is this ghost that 
whispers, "Night air!" and grins a satisfied grin as 
windows go down, and the lungs which — from the 
very fact of slower breathing during sleep — require 
the purest possible supply of air, become half asphyxi- 
ated and take their revenge in colds, pneumonia, and 
all forms of throat disease. The stout German whom 
I have seen sitting peacefully drinking his beer in a 
garden white with hoar frost, goes home to hermeti- 
cally sealed doors and windows, often with cotton in 
his ears, lest through an unguarded aperture some 
breath of air should find entrance. The Frenchman 
who dines outside the cafe on the boulevard until the 
snow comes, follows the same custom, and Southern 
Europe is of the same mind, — night air being held 
to be deadly in its nature. Yet, once more, one is 
compelled to ask, if we do not breathe night air at 
night, what do we breathe ? And the answer is that 
we breathe something so foul that a chemical test 
applied would show it black and deadly as any Stygian 
mist. Benjamin Franklin, one of the most common- 
sense men America or any other country has ever 



Organism of the House. 65 

known, wrote more than a hundred years ago: "I 
shall not try to explain why catarrhs are caused by 
damp rather than wet clothes, because I doubt the 
fact, and suspect that the causes of respiratory affec- 
tions are totally independent of dampness as well as 
of cold." 

In this shrewd surmise of one of the wisest and 
shrewdest men that has ever lived, lies a truth that 
the experimental physician is demonstrating every 
day ; yet, as a whole, it remains unheeded. About 
two million human beings go annually to the con- 
sumptive's grave, — a disease cured by an out-of-door 
life in pure air ; the percentage of pneumonia and 
lung diseases in general increases rather than lessens, 
and throat and lung specialists wax in numbers and 
grow fat in purse. It is worth while, then, to note 
here certain actual facts. 

Consumptives who have been coughing their lives 
away in stove, — or steam-heated rooms, recover in a 
lumber camp. I have seen in Minnesota, patients so 
ill that they were carried on litters, put into a bed of 
pine boughs in a lumber camp, where air came in at 
every chink, and where the only defence against it was 
rolling in blankets, and come out at the end of three 
months cured. In the pine woods of Maine the same 
thing has been done for years by a famous specialist 
in consumption, who has a camp in the deep woods, 
and whose cures are so certain that a relapse is rarely 
known. We all know that in war time delicate lungs, 
which had been watched with life-long precaution, 
went into camp, and, in spite of camp hardships, 
came out cured, relapsing only on return to close 
barrack quarters. 

Pine balsam is an antidote and the deep woods a 



66 Household Economics. 

protection, but in a variable climate such results would 
not be possible, says the objector. How then about 
the hunter, the herder, the teamster, exposed to every 
possible variation, and emerging more sturdy than 
before ? It is the operative in a steam-heated factory, 
or the dweller in the hot, weather-proof house of the 
city, who requires this constantly increasing army of 
throat and lung specialists, while the conductor or 
pilot, exposed to the fiercest kind of draught, comes 
home none the worse for it. 

The heat habit is as insidious as the drink habit, 
and its results are hardly less fatal. In the sort of 
temperature the American loves, the skin dries and 
loses any power to fulfil its natural office. The vic- 
tims of grip, so physicians testify, were, in the great 
proportion of cases, people who were in terror of a 
draught, and lived in super-heated rooms. Croup for 
the babies, bronchitis, and all the train of throat and 
lung diseases, are the natural consequence of breath- 
ing hot vitiated air, and the national catarrh, partly 
responsible for the "American voice," comes from the 
same cause. 

The doctors themselves preach one thing and prac- 
tise another, and it is only when fixed disease compels 
change, that a new habit is formed which revolutionizes 
the old methods. Even in such case, it is most often 
only one member of the family who is converted, the 
remaining clinging to old ways till compelled to alter- 
ation by the same necessity. In short, the old delusion 
is more powerful than any proof of what it has wrought, 
and, as a million furnace fires send up their first smoke 
to heaven, and shivering households gather about the 
black hole that does duty for the fireside of old, the 
lung microbe wriggles joyfully into his appointed 



Organism of the House, 6 J 

place, and the host that ride on the blast of sewer gas, 
and inhabit the cellar and the drain, make ready for 
the winter campaign. If the victim will not make war 
upon them, how shall they who dwell beyond their 
jurisdiction, and know them only by name ? 

The three essentials of all ventilation can be summed 
up in a few words. 

i . To provide an abundance of pure air in all parts 
of the house. 

2. To avoid draughts, either hot or cold. 

3. To provide means of escape for all foul air and 
odors. 

At all points in the consideration of these questions 
the student is referred to the small manual on Home 
Sanitation prepared by the Sanitary Science section of 
the Collegiate Alumnse, and so simple and clear that 
failure to comprehend is impossible. 

A wise man in Boston has invented an air tester, 
which gives the percentage of foul air, otherwise car- 
bonic acid gas, but it is not yet perfected and its cost 
is too great for ordinary uses. In the meantime, our 
ventilation, public and private, is a farce which also 
includes a tragedy. In the magnificent buildings of 
the new Inns of Court in London, judges and jury at 
their first occupancy of the court-rooms grew faint for 
want of air and an adjournment had to be taken, 
because the construction of the chambers was such that 
fresh air was forbidden entrance ; nor could these 
chambers be used until alterations had been made to 
admit the air. New York's famous five-million-dollar 
court-house is similarly faulty in its construction, with 
the result that several judges have died as a result of 
diseases caused by its lack of rational ventilation, and 
men who have mounted the bench with strong and 



6 8 Household Econorn us. 

robust constitutions have been made invalids for a 
large part of the year. A protracted trial in one of 
these court-rooms is generally followed by an epidemic 
of sickness among judges, lawyers, jurymen, clerks, and 
reporters, obliged by their duties to breathe such 
pollution from morning to night day after day for weeks. 

Often when a ventilating system is introduced into 
one of these great public buildings it fails to work, or 
the occupants plug up the apertures for fear of a draught. 
The draught fiend is found in every audience, which 
stifles and chokes because the fiend has an idea that air 
on the back of the neck is as fatal as air on the front 
of the neck is harmless, and calls for closed windows, 
reckless of other people's feelings and opinions, to say 
nothing of their health. 

The study of systems of ventilation is a vital part of 
any course in Household Economics, but in our limited 
space I can only speak of one or two practical forms, 
referring students to expert treatises on the subject for 
further and detailed knowledge. 

We know that fire in every form, from furnace to gas 
jet or lamp, feeds upon oxygen, and that where these 
forms of fire are busy satisfying themselves with our 
store of food, we must ourselves either starve or furnish 
a double supply. There is but one method warranted 
to work infallibly, and that is a warm-air flue, the 
upward heated current of which draws of! the foul 
gases from the room. This, supplemented b}^ an open- 
ing on the opposite side of the room for the admission 
of pure air, will accomplish the desired end. An open 
fireplace also accomplishes this so long as fire is burn- 
ing and a draught created. The simplest plan is to 
have ample openings from eight to twelve inches square 
at the top and bottom of each room, opening into the 



Organism of the House. 69 

chimney flue. In this case, even if stoves are used, 
the flue can be kept heated by the extension of the 
stovepipe some distance up the chimney, and the 
ascending current of hot air will draw the foul air from 
the room into the flue. This, as before said, must be 
completed by a fresh-air opening into the room on the 
other side. If no other can be had, the top of the win- 
dow may be lowered a trifle, or a board the precise 
width of the sash and four or five inches high may be 
used. Raise the lower sash, put this board under it, 
and an upward current of air will be created which will 
do much to purify the room. In the ordinary house, 
the direct action of heat on the air itself is the venti- 
lating power. In hospitals, theatres, and other large 
buildings, fresh air must be forced in by a steam-engine 
or electric motor and foul air drawn out in the same 
way. But remember that the popular notion most 
people hold, that air will rise simply because it is hot, 
has been proved to be as untrue as the ' ' night-air ' ' 
fallacy. Hot air rises because it is lighter than the 
cold air around it, just as a cork rises and floats in the 
water. As air heats it expands and the warm air tends 
to displace the cold-air, which, being heavier, glides 
under it and drives it upwards. It is to this end that 
we attach a cold- air box to the furnace, so that cold 
air outside the house can pass through it and drive 
that which is heated upward through the house. This 
warmed air accumulates in the top of the room, but 
does not change as quickly as that near the floor ; hence 
the need of the devices mentioned for changing it. In 
some flues a gas jet is kept burning to warm them to 
the necessary point, or the waste heat of another chim- 
ney is utilized. A mere ventilating shaft will not 
ventilate. It requires heat to produce a draft, and 



70 Household Economics. 

where a strong one is required for a very hot fire, as in 
furnaces for manufacturing purposes, very tall chimneys 
are essential. 

The best mechanical ventilator is the globe venti- 
lator, simple and ingenious and designed to overcome 
the effects of winds which may blow in such a wa}^ as 
to drive back the rising column of heated air. 

But in the ordinary dwelling-house there will usually 
have to be much reliance on windows as aids, and in 
much occupied rooms when their opening becomes 
necessary a screen can always be used to shut off direct 
draught if there is fear of it. 

We must remember, too, in connection with ventila- 
tion, that any causes producing foul air must not be 
allowed to continue for a moment. A vase of neglected, 
decaying flowers will poison the air of a whole room. 
A decaying head of cabbage in cellar or area way, a 
basket of refuse vegetables, a collection of old scrub- 
bing cloths, a foul garbage pail or box, — all these mean 
disease. 

Air and sunlight must search every corner of the 
house, and as nearly spotless cleanliness as may be, be 
the law. Without these first essentials of all life, con- 
stant slow murder will continue to go on, not only in 
our nurseries, but also in our public schools, whose 
ventilation, as a rule, is not much better than that of 
the ' ' Black Hole ' ' of Calcutta. In factories and 
workshops, we are equally guilty, — and white-faced, 
nerveless children grow into white-faced, nerveless 
men and women, the vicious circle repeating itself 
unchangingly. 

Heating and ventilation are so conjoined, especially 
in northern climates, that the treatment of the one natu- 
rally includes the other ; but we can merely mention a 



Organism of the House. ji 

few facts as to the best methods of heating. As a rule, 
we overheat our houses to a frightful degree, and we 
need first and most of all to guard against this ten- 
dency. At present, even with their varied ' ' improve- 
ments," the types of hot-air furnaces in use are all open 
to objections. A furnace is not the mystery the young 
housekeeper often considers it. It is only a large 
stove, standing in an enclosed air chamber. This en- 
closing is best if of brick, but can be galvanized iron. 
A cold- air box connects this chamber with the outside 
air, and the air from this ought to pass at least once 
around the furnace before entering the hot-air pipes. 

' ' Burnt air, ' ' against which the intelligent physician 
warns patients, is that sent out by a small volume of 
highly heated air such as the cheap small furnaces fur- 
nish. The furnace and all its equipments of cold-air 
box etc., should be large enough to supply the rooms 
with a large volume of air warmed to a temperature 
not exceeding 120 F. ; such a volume will keep the 
house at from 65 to 70 easily. Hot water and steam- 
coil furnaces give a better heat than the old-fashioned 
hot-air ones ; but even these, with water-pan always 
full, cold-air box opening on out-of doors, and a properly 
tended fire, give results not to be dreaded. Seventy 
degrees should be the maximum temperature of a 
room, and if the entire house could be evenly kept at 
65 °, people would be far healthier than they are 
at higher degrees. The chief advantage of a tempera- 
ture at 70 is that it can contain more moisture than a 
lower one. There is no reason why the old, who re- 
quire more heat than the young, should not obtain it 
by wearing more clothing instead of roasting the re- 
mainder of the household. Houses kept at from 8o° to 
90 mean simply slow murder or suicide for all within 



72 Household Economics, 

their walls, and as in most cases children are quite at 
the mercy of their elders' tastes and habits, our national 
disease of catarrh is easily explained. From 85 within 
to perhaps 30 below without, as in Minnesota or Wis- 
consin, would give catarrh to a hippopotamus or an 
ichthyosaurus. 

If hot-air registers are set in the house, remember 
that they must always be placed in the partitions of 
the rooms if possible. If they are in the floor, dust is 
constantly swept into them ; the carpets, if you have 
carpets, must all be cut : people will stand over them 
and take the most debilitating kind of warm bath. A 
decided advantage also of partition registers is that the 
heat is by them diffused more evenly through the room, 
and there is less waste through the ventilating aper- 
tures. Registers can never be beautiful, but wall 
registers are less harmful than floor registers. 

Gas is at no time a perfect heating medium, since 
active currents of air put it out. Gas or oil should 
only be employed for very temporary heating, as in a 
bath-room, and an airing of the room looked to when 
the fire is put out. Natural gas, so extensively used 
for this purpose where it is found, has all the advan- 
tages of ease of handling, cleanliness, and efficiency ; 
but those who use it literally dry up, there being no 
way of using water-pan or otherwise lessening the dry- 
ing quality of this sort of heat. Electricity is the 
agent to which we are to look as the coming heating 
power, — and if Mr. Tesla's experiments succeed, we 
shall in good time be able to use it as freely as water. 
In the meantime, it is already making its way in com- 
petition with gas, and has already been applied to 
ranges and cooking utensils, the Electric Kitchen at 
the Chicago Fair opening up a future in which coal 



Organism of the House. 73 

and ashes and smutty pots and pans make their exit 
all together. 

In the larger study of these questions, the best forms 
of fuel, their relative value and cost, and the modes of 
employing them, all have place ; but all I can do now 
is to refer for details to Chapter V. of The Easiest 
Way in Housekeeping and Cooking. 

The matter of lighting really precedes heating ; in 
fact, belongs to each of the heads we treat here, since at 
every stage we must have light as an active help in all 
cleaning processes, and so arrange that all plumbing 
may receive it. 

Natural light, otherwise sunshine, is tonic and dis- 
infectant in one, and the sun-bath ought to be a possi- 
bility for every house. The best hospitals have now a 
solarium on the roof, and not only are delicate patients 
strengthened, but it has been found both quieting and 
healing in all forms of nervous diseases. Delicate 
children are made over by this treatment, and more 
and more wise physicians are disposed to banish arti- 
ficial heat as much as possible and to use sunshine as a 
formal prescription. 

The artificial-light habit grows with civilization, 
and a fashionable luncheon shuts out sunlight, which 
is a keen detective and less friendly to rouge and 
powder than are shaded candles. The softly-diffused 
electric light promised us by Tesla will be almost as 
pervading as sunlight, but the electric light as we have 
it at present is hard in quality and trying to the eyes 
as well as to dress and complexion. Its best use is as 
policeman, since its adoption in our great cities has 
lessened crime to a considerable extent and made some 
forms of it impossible. The cost of the electric light 
makes it at present impracticable for average houses, 



74 Household Economics. 

which must still use gas or oil lamps. The uncertain 
flickering flame of the first is bad for the eyes, and 
either argand burner or porcelain shade should be used 
as protection. The steady light of a student lamp is 
best for all who must use the eyes hours at a time ; 
next best are the Rochester and other like forms, any 
of them preferable in quality of light to gas, although 
the heat they throw out is at times very disagreeable. 

L,amps require constant care in proper filling and 
trimming of the wicks, but they repay the trouble in 
the improved steadiness of the light. Only the best 
oil should be used. The crust on the burned wicks 
should be carefully rubbed off instead of cut, or if cut- 
ting is necessary, the corners of straight wicks should 
be a little rounded up to the centre. At intervals in 
the year, the parts of the burner which carry the wick 
should be boiled in strong soda water, the only thing 
that destroys the rank smell of the old oil. A lesson 
in lamp filling and cleaning is part of any course in 
domestic training, and in our cities experts now go 
from house to house, as only experts can deal with the 
finer order of lamps now in use. 

We come now to the next most vital portion of the 
organism of the house, its actual circulatory and excre- 
tory system, — the water service, on which something 
more than mere individual health depends. The small 
boy who roars as his face is washed simply voices an 
objection, no less tangible because it is a silent one, of 
the great mass of the people. ' ' The great unwashed ' ' 
as a descriptive term belongs, unhappily, to many 
other classes than the lower laboring class ; in what is 
known as good society we have often very evident 
demonstration that the best uses of water are practi- 
cally unknown. I have been in New England farm- 



Organism of the House. 75 

houses where the only facilities for washing for the 
entire family were limited to the kitchen sink, some 
soft soap, and a roller towel, — a square of looking-glass 
above and a family comb completing the toilet con- 
veniences. Baths in any perfect form are a product of 
high civilization, and with a system of baths must be 
also a system for the removal of waste water. In the 
isolated farm-house, built on the cheapest plan, both 
water supply and drainage fare as best they can, and 
the intelligent farmer's wife who reads what science 
has to say as to the causes of typhoid fever and diph- 
theria, looks with terror at her own drains and wonders 
what can be done about it. For most women, however, 
there is not only ignorance, but also a feeling that 
plumbing is something about which it is quite unrea- 
sonable to expect them to be informed. Even when 
the theory of sanitation is understood, the details are 
ignored. Take as an illustration the case quoted by 
Mrs. Plunkett, the well known authority who edits 
the Sanitary Department for the Independent of New 
York, and whose book, Women, Plumbers, and Doctors, 
is one of the best sanitary hand-books in existence. It 
is the tale of a devoted wife and mother whose husband 
was recovering from an onset of consumption, and who 
had been sickening for just the right sort of house 
into which to move. She had found it — a corner house, 
every room light, high, and airy, with open fireplace 
and transom for each, and no "set bowls." She had 
studied the complicated piping of the house, felt 
certain that every trap was ventilated, and, as she 
gave her triumphant account, ended with : ' ' And 
the gentleman said the cellar was all right, — I 
mean as to the drain-pipes and the furnace and all that ; 
and so I suppose it is. She had seen that there were 



76 Household Economics, 

stationary tubs in the basement laundry. Beyond that 
point she did not go, and why ? Because she had grown 
up in the belief that the care of the cellar belonged 
naturally to the men of the household. She would as 
soon have thought of mastering the mechanism of the 
engine in her husband's factory, as of studying the 
proper construction of a foundation wall or cellar bot- 
tom or a cold-air box, — and as it happened each one 
of these items was in a dangerously defective condition. 

Now any genuine study of plumbing means books, 
and not such books as can be read in an hour ; but 
there are certain fixed principles which make the foun- 
dation of all sanitary science, — a science, by the way, 
purely modern, and which in our own country began 
where many other good things have begun, — in Massa- 
chusetts, with the work done in 1871 by the Massachu- 
setts Board of Health, headed by the famous physician 
Dr. Geo. Derby. He and his associates made exhaus- 
tive examination of localities where epidemics of fever 
and diphtheria had raged, and where consumption had 
been most fatal, taking house by house, and finding in 
every case that bad drainage and bad water-supply 
were the chief causes of these diseases. 

The story of these houses is one of terrible interest, 
and the summary of the work of this Board for twenty- 
five years is of the same order as that given by Dr. B. 
W. Richardson, the famous President of the British 
Medical Association, who wrote ten years and more ago : 

" I am forced by experience to the conclusion that the whole 
future progress of the sanitary movement rests for permanent 
and executive support on the women of the country. The men 
of the house come and go ; know little of the ins and outs of 
anything domestic ; are guided by what they are told and are 
practically of no assistance whatever. The women are presuma- 



Organism of the House. 77 

bly conversant with every nook of the house from basement 
to roof, and on their knowledge, wisdom, and skill the physician 
rests his hopes. How important, then, how vital, that they 
should learn, as part of their earliest duties, the choicest sani- 
tary code." 

Furnaces being practically unknown in English 
houses and elaborate water-service belonging only to 
the better order of houses, English women have not the 
responsibility of the American woman, on whom double 
duty has alwa}^s fallen. 

Sanitary engineering is a new profession, and sanitary 
engineers are by no means sufficient in number to give 
us a competent inspector of plumbing for every town. 
The time is coming when he will be as much an essen- 
tial in planning the house as is the architect, but even 
with such expert service, it is still women who must 
listen and learn. 

For all houses, whether in the city or country, there 
are six problems which the householder must solve, 
and these are ranged in order by Col. George E. Waring, 
our highest authority as sanitary engineer, and author 
of The Sanitary Drainage of Houses and Towns. 

1. — To secure his house against excessive damp in its 
walls, in its cellar, and, where practicable, in its sur- 
rounding atmosphere. 

2. — To provide for the perfect and instant removal 
of fluid or semi-fluid organic wastes. 

3. — To provide a sufficient supply of pure water for 
domestic uses. 

4. — To guard against the evils arising from the de- 
composition of organic matter in or under the house. 

5. — To remove all sources of offence and danger which 
may affect the atmosphere about the house. 

6. — (And almost more important than all the rest) 



J 8 Household Economics, 

To prevent the insidious entrance into the house, 
through communications with the sewer, cesspool, or 
vault, of poisonous gases resulting from the decom- 
position of the refuse of his own household, or of other 
households with which a common sewer or drain may 
bring him into communication. 

We will take it for granted that the best possible lo- 
cation has been chosen. If imperative circumstances 
force a man to choose a site, the soil of which is damp, 
his wife can always insist on the cheap and efficient 
remedy of subsoil drainage, and there are books, — Col- 
onel Waring' s for instance, or the little manual already 
referred to, on House Sanitation, which give simple, plain 
instructions as to the minutest details, so that a man to 
this extent can even be his own sanitary engineer. 
With well-built foundation and drain-pipes crossing the 
cellar at intervals of not more than fifteen feet, the 
smallest land-drain tile being large enough, and so laid 
that there is a slight but continuous fall toward the 
outlet, drainage is at once secured. Earth is to be well 
rammed over them, and the whole cellar floor covered 
with concrete. 

If this is essential for the country, it is no less so for 
the town with its filled-in spaces and made land, with 
its strata of dead cats and tomato cans, old boots, coal 
ashes, and garbage of all kinds. Against the witch's 
broth into which any standing water would turn this 
arrangement of material, only a coat of the best asphalt 
over the concrete will afford protection, even in degree. 
In European houses of the better order this coat of as- 
phalt is now taken for granted as a necessary precaution. 

This provided for, next comes the water supply. 
Rain water is, of course, the purest type, but as we 
cannot take it direct from the clouds, we have to ac- 



Organism of the Hotise. 79 

cept what we get in our cisterns, to which rain water is 
conducted by pipes leading from the roof. The water 
must thus, unless a leader is used to run off the first 
rush, take up all the dust, soot, and other impurities, 
and requires filtering. The best cistern will include a 
filter of some sort, and this is accomplished in two 
ways. Either the cistern is divided into two parts, 
the water being received on one side and allowed to 
slowly filter through a wall of porous brick, — or a di- 
vision is made into upper and lower compartments, the 
upper one containing the usual filter of iron, charcoal, 
sponge, and gravel or sand. Distilled water and rain 
water both have the property of taking up and dissolv- 
ing lead wherever they find it, and it is for this reason 
that lead pipes, as leaders from or to cisterns, should 
under no circumstances be allowed, unless the lead is 
lined with some other material. 

Well water comes next, the usual supply for drink- 
ing in the village home, and with this source there are 
a series of dangers to be avoided. If a well be shallow 
and fed by surface springs, all the impurities of the soil 
will be found in it. "A well drains, ' ' writes Dr. Parker, 
an English sanitary expert, ' ' an extent of ground 
about it in the shape of an inverted cone which is in 
proportion to its own depth and the looseness of the 
soil. In very loose soils, a well of sixty or eighty feet 
will drain a large area, perhaps as much as two hun- 
dred feet in diameter, or even more. 

The refuse from certain manufacturing and other 
industries is often poured into our rivers : gas-works, 
slaughter-houses, starch-works, and the like. In houses, 
it is astonishing how many instances occur of the water 
of cisterns and tanks getting contaminated by the leak- 
ege of pipes and other causes, such as the passage of 



So Household Economics. 

sewage through overflow pipes. As we now know that 
typhoid fever, dysentery, and cholera are caused by 
water rendered impure by emanations from the evacua- 
tions in these diseases, it is plain how necessary it is to 
be quick-sighted in regard to the possible impurity of 
water from incidental causes of this kind. All tanks 
and cisterns should be inspected regularly. Wells 
should be covered, a good coping put around the open- 
ing to prevent substances being washed down from the 
surface ; the distances from cesspools and dung-heaps 
should be carefully noted ; no sewer should be allowed 
to pass near a well, and no w r ell near which a sewer 
passes should be used. 

Suppose all such precautions have been disregarded. 
Suppose, as is usual that the well is dug near the 
kitchen door — probably between kitchen and barn, — 
the drain, if there is a drain, from the kitchen pouring 
out the dirty water of wash-day and all other days, 
which sinks through the ground and acts as feeder to 
the waiting well. Suppose the manure heap in the 
barnyard also sends down its supply, and the privies 
contribute theirs. The water may be — as repeated 
analyses have proved such w r ater to be — unchanged in 
color or odor, yet none the less you drink a foul and 
horrible poison when you drink it ; slow in action it is 
true, but making every fibre in you ready for diphtheria, 
and typhus, and consumption. I could give you a hun- 
dred illustrations, but time forbids. The sum of all 
sanitation for the village or the isolated home is in this : 
See that no open cesspool or drain poisons either air 
or water about the house. Sunk at a proper distance 
from it, and connected with it by a drain so tightly put 
together that none of the contents can escape, the cess- 
pool, which may be an elaborate brick-lined cistern, or 



Organism of the House. 8 1 

merely an old hogshead tarred outside and in, and sunk 
in the ground, becomes one of the most important ad- 
juncts of a good garden, and if used in wetting the 
compost heap, helps to fulfil one of the great agricul- 
tural duties of man, which Liebig tells us is " returning 
to the soil as fertilizers all the salts produced by the 
combustion of food in the human body. " 

This is the law for water as used from w r ells and cis- 
terns or springs, and its general principles apply equally 
to the great reservoir from which a city or town draws 
its supply. Here the individual is often almost help- 
less, the city allowing sewers to be made by contractors 
who scamp the work at every point, and who have 
been known to let a drain run up-hill, rather than pay 
the cost of blasting out the intervening rock. Settling 
walls of hastily-built houses often dislocate pipes, the 
disconnection being very generally at the junction of 
the soil pipe and the drain ; the filthy soakage infect- 
ing the soil nearest the wall of the house. All this 
evil means the necessity for rigid inspection, and the 
utter abolition of cheap building and cheap sewerage. 
Good plumbing is not and never can be cheap, and 
that fact must be taken for granted in building. A 
poor plumber, or a mean contractor who compels poor 
plumbing, will often finish a joint which needs abso- 
lute accuracy of fit and tightness with a solder so poor 
and so stinted in amount that the joining speedily parts, 
the overflow sinks into the soil, and sickness sooner or 
later follows. 

The testing of joints for any possible defect in the 
pipes (and even a pin-hole means defect and the escape 
of poisoned air or water), is usually done with oil of 
peppermint. This is so penetrating in quality that, as 
it makes its way down through the pipes, — for it must 

6 



8 2 Ho use hold Economics. 

be poured in from above, — the faintest suspicion of 
hole or crack allows the familiar odor to escape and 
shows where solder is needed. 

Perfect plumbing, even of the simplest order, requires 
such careful fitting of pipes, preparatory to soldering, 
that it is often necessary to bend, cut, measure, and clip 
them not less than a dozen times. In a bath-room 
with four fixtures, I have seen forty-seven joints above 
the floor, and even more were beneath to complete all 
connections with the waste pipes. A supply pipe, a 
waste pipe, a ventilating pipe, and a safe waste were 
part of each fixture, and to make one union on each 
required sixteen joints. 

The rule now followed by the best sanitary engineers 
is, after full inspection of the work done, to draw a 
diagram of the completed piping, with full and plain 
directions as to which faucet to turn in case this or that 
pipe should burst, and which not to touch under any 
circumstances. This is placed back to back with the 
certificate in a double-glassed frame and hung in an in- 
stantly accessible place, — being the final touch in ideal 
sanitary plumbing, such as we shall all presently 
learn how to oversee. In this ideal plumbing, at- 
tained only here and there, every pipe should be in 
sight, and in the cellar where they have their exits and 
their entrances, each set should be painted a different 
color, to make attention to the needs of each easy and 
certain. 

To understand these needs involves study, and sani- 
tation has now in this country admirable monthly 
organs and a flood of special literature on all points 
involved. The reports of all the various State Boards 
of Health contain the latest and most scientific presen- 
tations of facts ; the technical departments of colleges 



Organism of the House, 83 

and universities and special colleges for technical train- 
ing — notably the Sheffield Scientific School, — have a 
comprehensive course of lectures on sanitation, such as 
will make part of the work to be done here in the future. 
In the meantime, the careful reading of a very few au- 
thorities, indeed, of one alone — either Colonel Waring' s 
or Mrs. Plunkett's book, — will give all the absolutely 
necessary knowledge on this point ; and this knowledge 
is one which belongs to the new school of preventive 
medical treatment, compels better public methods, and 
lengthens life for all. Public sanitation is part of the 
natural work of women ; it should and must be a vital 
part of their education. The problems it includes call for 
the widest knowledge and the most thorough training 
of every power of perception. ' ' The House Beautiful, ' ' 
can never attain its full ideal until its great circulatory 
system is made perfect, and with the new knowledge 
we are all to own, it will be beautiful not alone for the 
rich, but for the poor as well, since what harms one 
harms all. Progress that deserves the name is not for 
the individual alone, but for humanity as a whole. 

REFERENCES. 

Our Homes, by Dr. Henry Hartshorne. 

Healthy Houses, by Fleeming Jenkin. 

Pettinkoffer on Air in Relation to Clothing, Soil, and Divell- 

ings. 
Dulce Domum ; or, The Plumber and Sanitary Houses, by 

S. S. Hellyer. 
Sanitary Arrangements for Dwellings, by W. Eassie. 
Annual Reports of the Massachusetts, Michigan, and New 

Jersey Boards of Health. 
The Sanitarian ; a Monthly Magazine of Health. 
The Plumber and Sanitary Engineer ; a Bi-weekly Journal. 
The Sanitary Record, London. 



84 Household Economics. 

Defects in Plumbing and Drainage Work, by Francis Vacher. 
The Easiest Way, by Helen Campbell. Chaps. II. and III. 
Leeds on Ventilation. 
Hygiene in the Home, by J. West Roosevelt, M.D., vol. i.. 

Chap. VII. of The Woman's Book. 
Hygiene and Public Health, edited by Albert Buck, M.D. 
Public Health Problems, by John B. I. Sykes. 
The Law of Public Health and Safety, by Leroy Parkes and 

Robert Worthington. 
Plumbing Problems, from The Sanitary Engineer, published 

by Engineering Record, 1892. 
House Lighting by Electricity, by Angelo Fahie. 
American Plumbing, by Alfred Revill. 
Sanitary Applia-nces for Buildings, by F. Cloyer. 
The Water Meter, by W. G. Kent. 
Ventilation and Heating, by J. S. Billings, M.D. 
A Practical Treatise on Foundations, by W. M. Patton. 
Sewage Disposal, by George B. Waring, Jr. 
Kitchen Boiler Connections, published by D. Williams. 
Notes on the Ventilation and Warming of Houses, Churches, 

Schools, and Other Buildings, by Ernest H. Jacob (Manual 

of Health Series). 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES. 

Our Homes and How to Make them Healthy, edited by Shirley 

Murphey, Cassell & Co. 
How to Live, or Health and Healthy Homes, by George Wilson, 

M.D., P. Blakiston & Sons. 
"Principles and Practice of House Drainage" by George B. 

Waring, Jr., articles in the Century Magazine for November 

and December, 1884. 
The Sanitary Condition of Dwelling-Houses in Town and 

Country, by George B. Waring, Jr., Van Nostrand Science 

Series, No. 31. 
The Principles of House Drainage, by J. Pickering Putnam. 
House Drainage and Water Service, by James G. Bayless. 
Hand-Book of Sanitary Information for Householders, by Roger 

S. Tracy, M.D., D. Appleton & Co. 



Organism of the House. 85 

Healthy Houses, by William Kassie, D. Appleton & Co. 

Air and its Relations to Life, by W. N. Hartley, D. Appleton 

&Co. 
Water Supply, Chemical and Sanitary, by William Ripley 

Nichols, M.D., John Wiley & Sons. 
Sanitary Tracts, issued by the Citizens' Sanitary Society of 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Sanitary House Inspection, by W. P. Gerhard. 
Drainage and Sewerage of Dwellings, by W. P. Gerhard. 
The Drainage of Habitable Dwellings, by W. Iv. Brandmore. 
How to Drain a House, by George E. Waring. 
The Sanitary Drainage of Houses and Towns, by George E. 

Waring. 
The Separate System of Sewerage, by Staley and Pierson. 
Ventilation and Heating, by Dr. John S. Bellamy. 
Women, Plumbers, and Doctors, by Mrs. H. M. Plunkett. 
Hygiene and Public Health, by Louis C. Parkes, M.D. 
Hygiene and Public Health, edited by A, H. Buck, M.D. 
Practical Hygiene, by E. A. Parkes, M. D. 
Hand-Book of Hygiene and Sanitary Science, by George Wilson. 
Hygiene, by A. Newsholme, M.D. 

The American Health Primers, edited by W. W. Keene, M.D. 
Home Sanitation, edited by Ellen H. Richards and Marion 

Talbot. 
Home Sanitation, a Manual for Housekeepers, by the Sanitary 

Science Club of the Association of Collegiate Alumnse. 
School-Room Ventilation as an Investment, by George Henry 

Knight. 




CHAPTER V. 

DECORATION. 

Use and Value of Decoration in Nature and Art ; its Laws and 
Principles — Relation to Pictorial Art — Evolution and His- 
tory — Special Development in Races — Associate Conditions 
in Cause and Effect — Racial Influences — Periods — Our 
Present Level ; the Highest, the Lowest, the Average — 
Masculine and Feminine Decoration — "How to Make 
Home Beautiful " — The Sense of Beauty in Women — 
"Traces of a Woman's Hand" — Survivals of Savagery — 
" Home-Made," "Ready-Made," "Born and Not Made" 
— The Power of the Home-Maker — Educational and Moral 
Value of Truth in Art — Artistic Sins and their Moral Coun- 
terparts — Homes, Schools, and Prisons — Practical Possibili- 
ties — "Often in a Wooden House a Golden Room You 
Find " — Spiritual Laws in Color— A Rest Room — National 
Importance of Elevation in Art. 



[ understand the virtue and value of decoration 
in the house, large knowledge is required of 
decoration as a form of art and what relation it 
holds to humanity. In all the field of study covered 
by this course, we are hampered, as I explained in the 
introduction, by preconceived ideas and opinions, often 
many centuries old. In this particular subject there is 
less to contend with than in some others, ignorance 
being no obstacle at all, but an inviting vacuum. The 
principal difficulties to be met are the utilitarian and 

86 



Decoration, &J 

the ascetic. Both speak, in our common phrase, 
•■' merely for decoration." The puritanic objection to 
gratifying " the lusts of the eye" we have largely out- 
grown ; but the ' ' mereness ' ' still remains to us. We 
still look on decoration as an agreeable superfluity. 
While this misconception exists, we shall continue to 
adorn ourselves and our belongings with things super- 
fluous truly, and by no means always agreeable ; 
"trimmings " of all sorts, sewed on, pasted on, tacked 
on, nailed on, glued on, — appended and addended in 
all superficial ways ; incomplete things of supposed 
beauty added to complete things of known ugliness, 
"merely for decoration." 

In vain does the architect implore : " Decorate con- 
struction ; do not construct decoration ! " We con- 
tinue to dismiss the whole subject as a light one, and 
while we have much that is " merely for decoration," 
we have in it no real decoration at all. 

Do we know what it means " to decorate " ? "First : 
To distinguish, grace, honor. ' My harte was fully 
sette, and my miude deliberately determined to have 
decorated this realme wyth wholesome laws, statutes, 
and ordinances.' — Hall, Edw. IV., anno 1523." In 
this definition, it is connected directly with decorum, 
meaning, of all things, fitness, propriety, relation. The 
very essence of the thought implied in decoration is 
relativity— that which belongs. 

This idea is carried out in our further and special 
sense of decollation as the conferring of a mark of honor 
— " to decorate an artist with the cross of the Region of 
Honor." 

The secondary use of the word : "To deck with some- 
thing becoming or ornamental ; adorn, beautify, embel- 
lish ; as to decorate the person ; to decorate an edifice ' ' ; 



88 Household Economics. 

or " a grave and forcible argument decorated with, most 
brilliant wit and fancy" (Macaulay's Warren Has- 
tings), rests entirely on the primal idea of that which 
belongs. 

With this in mind, follow the development of decora- 
tion in nature and in art, Think of that vast field of 
decoration in the flower and again of the varied ' ' deco- 
rative appendages " and markings among animals, in 
which there is never any contradiction of structural and 
functional necessity, and in which the decoration 
itself serves a higher use, — higher in the sense of being 
more complex and not so immediate. And while all 
this painting of petals serves to allure and direct the 
winged match-maker ; and the glories of peacock and 
pheasant serve to win the favor of their consorts, do 
not think of all this beauty as so much bait, but as 
the natural outcome of deep impulses which stir the 
organism to a demonstration beyond the immediately 
essential. Think of the beauty as the outcome of pleas- 
ure and of love, — and then we can understand the 
beginning of decorative art in humanity. The energy 
that made tool, weapon, and utensil spent itself further 
on their decoration ; and the love of the savage for his 
trusty spear is the same decorative impulse as that 
which gems the hilt of a good sword and inlays its 
scabbard with gold. 

The savage impulse answers to its own rude laws ; 
but with the growth of man restraint became a law, in 
art as well as in politics. Principles were studied, 
laws deduced, and limitations recognized. Conven- 
tionalization was accepted as a principle of decoration, 
— and the laws of repetition, alternation, symmetry, 
and radiation became aids in intelligent design. What 
color and line mean to the mind of man ; and how to 



Decoration. 89 

convey ideas and sentiments through their use, was 
now the study of the worker, and man's creations 
blossomed into beauty as naturally as those of God. 
Careful and extended study will be needed here, for 
this subject of " mere decoration " is one of the most 
vital in household economy. 

The relation of decorative to pictorial art is barely 
understood in most minds, and it demands careful ex- 
planation. One distinction, and the essential one, is 
that decoration is part of something and a picture is a 
thing in itself. Whatever line and color is used in 
decoration is used with regard to the surface, substance, 
size, shape, and use of the object to be decorated, — 
while the picture uses line and color to convey idea or 
feeling in itself. No matter how simple is the form we 
draw, meaning it to speak for itself, it is a picture ; but 
that form painted on a tea-cup, stamped on calico, or 
carved on a cornice, becomes decoration, and must be 
judged as such. The figures of men and women on a 
Greek vase are used decoratively ; the immortal sculp- 
ture of the Parthenon frieze is " mere decoration," and 
every line conforms to its use. The pictures on our 
walls are used as decoration, and in that sense, they 
are irregularly placed rectangles of varying proportions 
and disconnected colors — about as poor a form of 
decoration as could be imagined. But the picture 
itself in its pictorial value is quite another matter to 
be hung " on the line," not skied. 

Decorative art reduces line and color to their lowest 
terms, studies their elements and relations, and repro- 
duces those elements in purer and subtler combinations 
than nature shows us. Much like the laws of musical 
composition are the underlying laws of decorative art. 
But all of this must be gone into with care and with 



90 Household Economics. 

full illustration in our later work. We shall follow the 
evolution of this precious art from where the primitive 
potter first drew a line around his pot, followed it with 
another and learned that parallel lines gave some pleas- 
ure ; with still another, and found three better than 
two ; put dots between them and learned repetition ; 
put lines between the dots and learned alternation, — 
and so up through all the laws of eye pleasure, which 
is certainly not less than ear pleasure, when we under- 
stand its laws. 

In these lines and dots which we find, even in the 
tools of the Stone Age, lies the beginning of decorative 
art. To the savage, even to-day, it has a religious 
significance, as witness the tatooing of his body and 
the carving and painting of his spear-handle and other 
weapons. Take the face of the Maori, and every line 
of paint is a story, each curve a grade in his knight- 
hood, and his whole body to the initiated is a family 
record, — a history of sustained honors. 

At a very early stage, the savage refused to be con- 
tent with rough tanned skin, or uncarved handle for 
the weapon or tool of sharp stone. The women 
worked out some simple recurrent design for both skins 
and mats, and the men sought to reproduce in their 
weapons of war objects and curves that would inspire 
terror in the foeman. Here came the first departure 
from mere nature watching ; invention stepped in. 
The lion or boar singly was not terrible enough, and 
he proceeded to combine their ferocity in a mongrel 
horror which daunted even himself and meant night- 
mare to the small boy of that early age. Hard on 
these first instincts came the formulations of religions, 
and men ceased to imitate nature and look farther, 
peeking some mystic symbol for the unseen. Fixed 



Decoration. 9 1 

laws soon regulated every line, as in Egypt and in In- 
dia where century after century each is repeated with- 
out the faintest variation. The Hindoo, the Chinese, 
the Moor, — the Oriental at all points, — followed this law 
and produced a fixed scheme of decoration. The 
Greeks who in the very beginning were the exception 
to surrounding barbarism, rose to perfection by quick 
degrees. Simple and refined in manner, rigid in habits, 
hardy in health, with stalwart beauty as a standard, 
" the flowing grace of their own unfettered limbs taught 
them the purity of true art lines." Egypt went on 
with her foldless draperies, indiscriminate finishing of 
details, and rigid system of coloring. But Phoenicia 
waked up, and from Tyre and Sidon sent out, as did 
Carthage, stuffs of glorious dyes, and golden cups and 
coins clean cut and embossed ; while through every 
phase of advance Greece strode on through wars and 
revolutions, manifesting in all manner of ornamenta- 
tion an art growing steadily stronger and more refined. 
Until their decline began with the luxury which Anac- 
reon sang, their own habits remained simple, but they 
gave lavishly to their gods ; and decorated broadly and 
delicately. Their rules were fixed, for a grammar of 
decoration naturally developed itself ; but it was a fix- 
edness within whose limits all things remained possi- 
ble. The painters and the workers in stone or metal 
had each a theory, — nor can we of to-day add to their 
conception one line that does not mar. Their climate 
was that of the temperate zone, and they looked at na- 
ture with calmer eyes than belong to the Orientals, who 
love gorgeous coloring and lines of unending intricacy, 
— naturally enough, when nature of the most lavish 
order surrounds them. Color blazes from white inten- 
sity to blue no less intense, to greens and reds of the 



92 Household Economics. 

richest, and the whole gamut so deep that all northern 
bloom seems pale in comparison. ' ' Through the 
jungle and the closely-knitted bush tracks, up and 
down, over-laced, across — there is not an inch that is 
not covered with its tendril patterns." They repro- 
duced them all in strange arabesques, each with its 
meaning and interpretation, — and to-day the forms are 
unchanged, and the student of art recognizes at a 
glance the source whence the scheme he studies had its 
inspiration. 

Gradually as partial peace came to fighting, strug- 
gling humanity, and nations borrowed from each other 
the points in work that satisfied them best, it became 
plain that these decorative arts had three stages : 

i. — Art, purely necessary and useful ; 
2. — Art, decorative ; 
3. — Fine art. 

The first came, as we have seen, from the woman 
who sought for something to hold food, taking her 
model, it may be from the gourd, the shell, or the 
curved palm from which she had drunk water, and 
who fashioned the first rough clay vessel and dried it in 
the sun. The second stage, that of simple decoration 
in line and dot, we have already noted, and our mu- 
seums hold specimens of pottery from various barbarous 
nations, the decoration of which is plainly copied from 
the lines of basket-work and of woven nets and mats. 

Passing on from this stage, one by one the fine arts 
join hands, — and in architecture, painting, and sculp- 
ture we see the final transition from the Stone Age and 
the cave-dweller to Phidias and the Parthenon. Deco- 
ration, or rather the decorative arts, must at last 
borrow from all ; and as you read the history of art, 



Decoration. 93 

which is in the nature of things the history of any 
civilization, you will see how beauty and sense of 
beauty grew, and how each nation drew from others 
the thing it most needed and most valued. 

Decoration in the largest sense, then, means all the 
decorative arts, and no man has better denned its 
meaning than has William Morris. 

"These are the arts," he writes, " by means of which inen 
have at all times more or less striven to beautify the familiar 
matters of every-da}^ life ; a wide subject, a great industry ; 
both a great part of the history of the world, and a most help- 
ful instrument to the study of that history. A very great 
industry, indeed, comprising the trades of house-building, paint- 
ing, joinery and carpentry, smith's work, pottery, glass-making, 
weaving, and many others : a body of art most important to the 
public in general, but still more so to us handicraftsmen, since 
there is scarce anything that they use and that we fashion, but 
it has always been thought to be unfinished till it has had some 
touch or other of decoration about it. True it is that in many 
or most cases we have got so used to this ornament that we look 
upon it as if it had grown of itself, and note it no more than 
the mosses on the dry sticks with which we light our fires. So 
much the worse ! For there is the decoration, or some pretence 
of it, and it has, or ought to have, a use, a meaning. For, and 
this is at the root of the whole matter, everything made by 
man's hand has a form which must be either beautiful or ugly 
— beautiful if it is in accord with nature and helps her — ugly, 
if it is discordant with nature and thwarts her. It cannot be 
indifferent. We, for our part, are busy or sluggish, eager or 
unhappy, and our eyes are apt to get dulled to this eventfulness 
of form in those things which we are always looking at. 

''Now it is one of the chief uses of decoration, the chief 
part of its alliance with nature, that it has to sharpen our dulled 
senses in this matter ; for this end are those wonders of intri- 
cate patterns interwoven, those strange forms invented, that 
men have so long delighted in— forms and intricacies that do not 
necessarily imitate nature, but in which the hand of the crafts- 
man is guided to work in the way that she does ; till the web, 



94 Household Economics, 

the cup, or the knife, look as natural, nay, as lovely as the 
green field, the river bank, or the mountain flint. To give 
people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, — that is 
one great office of decoration. To give people pleasure in the 
things they must perforce make, — that is the other use of it." 

Out of all this comes a certain unconscious intelligence, 
just as the poorest child in Japan is born with a sense 
of beauty in form and line and reproduces it naturally, 
as his fingers are taught to convey the thought of his 
mind. As yet, we, as a people, know nothing of these 
gifts, and until every student of household economics, 
recognizes that such beauty is part of the house and 
must be learned with no less diligence than aught else 
that goes to the making of a home, it cannot be, as it 
must come to be, the simple, natural inheritance of 
the nation. Beauty in the home must come from that 
higher knowledge given by the higher education, and 
in such beauty will come the repose and calm that we 
sigh for and seek, and seek in vain, amid surroundings 
that would turn the Greek into a basilisk and draw a 
grin from even a South-Sea islander. 

The list of genuinely good and fine authorities on 
this subject is a small one, — for I exclude at once all 
manuals made merely to sell. But Ruskin, in bits ; 
William Morris, Eastlake, I^ucy Crane, and Rhoda and 
Agnes Garrett will give both theory and practical 
knowledge, while there are other names hardly less 
honorable and in many ways useful and suggestive. 

This study falls directly into the hands of women, 
and they must not think they can understand it by 
instinct. Women are credited with having a sense of 
beauty distinctively their own ; ' ' feminine taste ' ' is 
spoken of as an intrinsic superiority on their part. 
Should you think well of the ear for music of a per- 



Decoration. 95 

former or composer who deliberately perpetrated most 
atrocious discords ? Or of the mathematical ability of 
one who stoutly maintained that two and two made 
five ? How can a sense of beauty be predicated of 
those who in their distinctive dress outrage beauty's 
primal laws, and in their household decoration are still 
savages ? Indeed, the art sense is far better defined in 
many savage tribes than it is in our women. When a 
woman is willing to wear around her neck, as was done 
in the winter of 1894-95, a thing that looks like a dead 
kitten rolled out thin like pie-crust, she cannot claim 
the sense of beauty. 

We speak with tender admiration of the " traces of a 
woman's hand." These are to the novelist, usually, a 
bird in a cage, a flower in a pot, and a lamp in petti- 
coats, — all of which are questionable from an artistic 
point of view. The reason for our feeling is plain. 
Where women are they show, of course, signs of their 
differing cults. And to man, these signs, in speaking 
of woman, speak of home, of love, of motherhood, of all 
sweet and restful things ; and so give pleasure through 
association of ideas, which he attributes to their 
beauty. The woman who can put together a feather- 
duster, a Japanese doll's head, and some satin ribbon, 
— using the head to thrust the feather duster through, 
so that its tuft of feathers waves above the broken 
skull and the ribbon conceals the decorpitation below, 
— such a woman has no sense of beauty. In that one 
object and its placing — the thing is hung up in the 
parlor — is a more potent proof of the need of higher 
education in women than could be written in volumes': 

What beauty sense women have, they acquire as men 
do, by inheritance, education, and practice, — not other- 
wise. And it is hoped here to indicate how great is the 



96 Household Economics. 

need of that education, that practice, and that trans- 
mission to future generations. 

The decorative art we have now is of three kinds : 
the home-made, save the mark ; the ready-made, and 
here there is no mark to save ; and that which is born 
and not made, and which we rarely see. Nevertheless 
since Kngland's renaissance — the pre-Raphaelite move- 
ment — there is a strong, new art impulse in the world 
and great growth. The importance of this knowledge 
to women, in view of their enormous powers as home- 
makers — which means man-makers, — is a thing which 
can hardly be overestimated. We underestimate con- 
tinually, however, holding our duty done if the home 
be, on the one hand, clean and in order, and, on the 
other, fashionable in its appointments as far as our 
means allow ; and so our children — that means all the 
people, remember ! — grow up in a home atmosphere of 
low art, bad art, or no art at all ! This is because we 
have so slight a conception of the educational and 
moral value of truth in art. No one who has studied 
the principles of art, and found their application to the 
conduct of life, can make this mistake. 

Call to mind for a moment that a nation's rise and 
fall can be measured absolutely by its art ; that a 
healthy and virtuous period shows itself in strong pure 
art, and a period of debasement and vice in a low and 
vicious art ; remember the re-active influence of man's 
work upon his character ; think how much more im- 
pressionable are the }^oung to all their surroundings ; 
and then see how serious a matter it is that our chil- 
dren should have to spend the most important years of 
their lives under the influence of such weak, false, 
frivolous, and wicked art as is found in the average 
home. 



Decoration. 9 7 

Pure, beautiful, and harmonious color ; true and noble 
form, surrounding the infant and the growing child, 
have a deep, steady, unconscious effect for good which 
helps make all life better and easier to him. Discor- 
dant, stupid decoration helps to lower the tone and 
weaken the power of the mind. If your wall-paper 
was covered with blue chickens with their heads cut 
off, interspersed with cannon-balls and fish-nets, it 
would have a confusing effect on the child's mind, — 
that, I think, is perceptible. So, in less degree, does 
all our silly, meaningless, discordant spattering of paint 
and ribbon and lace affect him, — not so violently as the 
blue chickens afore mentioned, but surely none the 
less. A gilded dustpan with a marsupial pouch of vel- 
vet full of photographs is calculated to check the devel- 
opment of the logical faculty, and to drive the boys 
away from home as fast as their legs can carry them ! 
There are no gilded dustpans at the club. 

When the lines and colors in your house have no 
relation to each other, it is difficult to express the home 
feeling ; and when they quarrel violently and give one 
another the lie by their very co-existence, there is no 
wonder that the children disagree. A hairpin-holder 
made to look like a chair, a chair-back modelled after a 
fan, a fan hung up and turned into a pocket — and all 
of them tied up in satin ribbons, — this protean species 
of decoration does not conduce to morality or common- 
sense. 

In sober sadness, now, this thing is true : There is 
absolute connection between man's inside nature and 
his outside creation, and it works both ways. Idle, frivo- 
lous, senseless humanity produces its kind in art ; and 
idle, frivolous, senseless art produces its like in human- 
ity. A blank wall goes with a blank mind, and would 



g 8 Household Economics. 

only be willingly endured by an idiot. We, having a 
high sense of beauty and the fitness of things, use blank 
walls in our prisons for combined purposes of punish- 
ment and reformation, — and, in our schools, where the 
young of our race spend attentive years, for their 
educational value ! 

The educational value of a blank wall is a thing 
we shall know more about by and by, when house- 
hold economics are rightly understood. Something, of 
course, is being done in these lines, but it is mainly 
from the art side ; we want to study it from the home 
side. 

The home where order reigns, not only in the kitchen 
and the linen closet, but quite as much in the selection 
of books and pictures, the arrangement of rooms and 
the coloring thereof, — will have as marked an influence 
for good as shown in the advantages of our present 
stage of home order over that of the wigwam. 

The child is a new soul. He has just come. All 
that he knows of life he has to learn after he gets here ; 
and what he learns first stays longest . He is born — nine- 
ty-nine times in a hundred — into an ugly room in an 
ugly house on an ugly street in an ugly city. Notice the 
baby's love of flowers, ribbons, feathers ; see how wild 
the child is in the garden or the daisy field ; he loves 
beauty a?id knows it when he sees it. We introduce him 
into a world of ugliness, and then tell him by waj r of 
explanation that we did it ! " God made the country 
and man made the town," we say solemnly to the child. 
Yes, this is very ugly, — we made it ! 

And man can make things so beautiful — such piled 
up dreams of beauty — that the child will laugh and cry 
aloud with ecstasy. The works of man are as beauti- 
ful as anything on earth. We set up the works of man in 



Decoration. 99 

opposition to the works of God, but in reality God 
works through man as surely as through gem and 
flower, if man will let him. 

We could have city, street, house, and room as beau- 
tiful as sea-shells, so that the little new souls among us 
would not lose all their trailing clouds of glory and 
could grow into a noble manhood and womanhood 
without half the pain and struggle it costs them now. 

There is one reason why this subject is more heart- 
ening to dwell upon than are many other phases of our 
study. It is within reach. We may not be able to 
dictate as to our habitat, to command location, founda- 
tion, or elevation, to choose or order our architecture, 
or even be perfectly sure of the plumbing ; but when it 
comes to decoration, we can cover the situation. No 
matter how little money there is, it can be rightly spent 
instead of wrongly. And if we cannot achieve the vir- 
tues of commission, we can at least practise those of 
omission. 

In a class of college men and women, coming often 
from beautiful and in the majority of cases always from 
comfortable, well-to-do homes, it is difficult to drop the 
personal point of view and recall the fact that out of 
our sixty millions of population, the large proportion 
are not only not very well-to-do, but with a lack of 
beauty in life and surroundings that is one of the most 
terrible sources of depression in our prairie villages, and 
the innumerable isolated farm-houses of the great West 
and Northwest, indeed the whole country. How are 
they to know that even when only rough plaster is pos- 
sible, that plaster can have, in the mixing, its dash of 
yellow ochre, of green, or blue, or Indian red, and that 
if curtains or drapings of any order are used, even when 
only five cents a yard, they can harmonize or contrast 



ioo Household Economics, 

according to the laws of color ? One shade of paint 
does not cost greatly more than another, and anything 
is better than the dirty white the cheap houses are com- 
pelled to wear. 

If the child asks : ' ' Why must plaster be that color, 
mamma ? " it is the country custom to snap his head with 
a thimble, worn, the child supposes, chiefly for that 
purpose, and to tell him, " Because it zs." 

Now this question which is very likely to be heard 
from any intelligent child, is a legitimate one and 
to be answered intelligently. Necessarily the reply 
would be, 

" Plaster is that color, my dear, because we do not yet 
know enough of beauty, and the use of beauty, to make 
it any other." The knowledge required is not a sacred 
mystery either. It does not require a trip to Europe. 
One lesson in color ought to inform a class as to which 
are ' ' warm ' ' and which ' ' cold, ' ' and why . The effect 
of green on the eye versus red ; the complementary col- 
ors, the use of harmony with its restfulness, and contrast 
with its stimulus, — all these little matters could be 
acquired by any intelligent adult. 

It is marvellous how soon the color-sense may be de- 
veloped, even in the aged. I once knew of an old lady 
of the rigidest New England type who had never cared 
but for two pictures in her life, and who preferred the 
parlor paper to be white with a gold thread in straight 
lines — white paint, of course ; and thin white china, — 
all combining to produce the effect of a nice snow-storm 
with rain and sharp frost afterward and just a touch of 
four-o'clock sunshine across it. This good lady was 
obliged to live in the household of an artist for two 
years, — he being one of those intense colorists whose 
pictures are like stained glass in full sunlight. And, in 



Decoration. I ox 

spite of her years and prejudices, the atmosphere of 
Venetian red, delf blue, deep yellow, dull black, and 
warm terra-cotta so worked upon her mind that she 
never after could be reconciled to the Arctic graveyard 
color-scheme of her youth. 

Here there opens up to us a vista into which we 
may look, but only to realize how little teaching has 
done for us, how much we may do for ourselves. 
Optics and the laws of light it is true are taught the 
student, but for the most part merely by rote. Beyond 
the letter lies the world of the spirit, but this it would 
seem the business of what we call education to ignore. 
A scientist like Tyndall takes us straight to the heart 
of that magic realm where light, and color, and sound, 
play at hide-and-seek and the three are often one. In 
the deep Eastern philosophies, the spiritual laws and 
effects of colors are recited, their insight being con- 
firmed by the scientist of to-day. Swedenborg, the 
mystic, gives a series of correspondences that are no 
less in line with modern discovery. The " blue-glass 
craze" passed, being an over-statement, but it left 
behind a series of valuable deductions that have been 
ever since in use, not only by physicians, but by fruit 
and flower growers also. 

This larger phase of the thought of color and its 
meanings may wait the time of the individual student. 
But the simpler ones may not wait. Every child 
should know the meaning of a " rest room," and every 
house should own it if no more than the prophet's 
"little chamber on the wall " ; a room to which all 
in the home may in turn have access. In such room 
experiment has shown that the colors most quieting 
and soothing are, warm leaf-browns for floor in rug or 
carpet, brown of palest leaf-brown for cushions and 



102 Household Econom us. 

drapings, and for high lights, clear yellow sash curtains, 
lamp shades, or stray bits of color in vase or jug. I 
have seen a tired, over-wrought woman pause at the 
door of such a room and draw a long breath. 

" It is the restiest place I ever saw ! What is it ? " 
cried one who listened wide-eyed as she heard the 
theory. Yet the child could know that the tints earth 
and leaf put on as autumn draws near are the tints of 
the rest time, and that the analogy is one to follow out. 
Reds, not glaring and aggressive, but the hues we know 
as Indian reds, warm and brighten northern rooms, 
whilst blue, save in summer, sends a shiver all through 
one. That the floor should own the darkest tint in the 
room and the ceiling the lightest, follows the natural 
law of deep-brown earth and blue sky with its flecks 
of white cloud. As to the more complicated combina- 
tions and contrasts, only study of their laws and 
principles can make plain their real place and signifi- 
cance. 

For the old this knowledge means an addition to 
life. There is a vital quality in red that warms and 
cheers, unconsciously often, and it should be the chief 
tone of the color scheme in the rooms in which they 
spend the most time. Happily for us all schemes of 
color in which the materials used may be of the rich- 
est, or of the cheapest, but in which harmony is the 
law, have been worked out for us, and any woman 
may study, as if it were a mathematical proposition, 
what harmonizes and what does not, whether in blend- 
ings or contrasts. If to such study she can bring a 
natural color-sense only waiting a touch to begin de- 
velopment, the way is clear, and for most American 
women this may be taken for granted. 

It is plain, then, that we can have beauty in decora- 



Decoration, 1 03 

tion, if we only know enough to want it ; and we can 
learn all that is necessary in order to want it without 
any desperate effort. 

Mean as our houses are to-day, we can build an inner 
beauty which will help us to better living. " Often 
in a wooden house a golden room we find ! ' ' And 
the tired man and tireless child will find rest and 
growth therein. Moreover, the " golden room " will 
so work upon our spirits as to force us into better 
houses soon. The beauty within would teach us to 
see the ugliness without, and we should soon find it 
unbearable. 

If the women of the world would develop a sense 
of beauty, would apply it, first, to that body which 
is the fairest thing God ever made ; second, to the fit 
clothing of that fair body in all honor to the immortal 
soul within ; third, to the encompassing household 
walls, within which so many of life's teuderest hours 
are passed and such high duty done ; — by this threefold 
expression of beauty, the beauty which is truth and 
right, they would do more to elevate the race and 
purify politics than even the right of suffrage will 
accomplish. 

Beauty, be it remembered, is the expression of the 
highest of all. Our familiar phrase concerning some 
well acting scheme, "That's the beauty of it ! " is 
a true oue. The beauty of a thing is its perfectness. • / 
Beauty in decoration is only a part of the beauty of 
living, but a most essential part. For there can be 
no true decoration without full understanding of the 
thing to be decorated, its place, use, and value. 

There is one point of view from which this subject 
calls for our attention which is of deepest importance 
to both men and women ; that is, the point of view of 



104 Hotisehold Economics. 

patriotism. As a nation, we need a nobler art. The 
ugliness, the coarse disorder, in which we are content 
to live, is not only a national disgrace, but is also a 
direct check to needed growth. We should be more 
intelligent, more moral, and even more prosperous, 
were we more artistic. As it is now, though we have 
all the beaut}' of nature and all the art' of Europe to 
draw from ; though we have great talent among us 
and abundant training, American art is hampered, 
dwarfed, and utterly distorted by the lack of a cultivated 
taste in the great public. While the housewives of 
America know no more of art than they do now, they 
will continue to raise the children of America in taste- 
less homes of discord and confusion ; and such chil- 
dren will grow up to form both our market for the 
artist's work, and the public opinion that governs it. 
The woman whose taste governs the market, governs 
her dress and that of her children and modifies that 
of her husband ; governs the furnishing and decora- 
tion of her house and helps to criticise more public 
products ; — this woman is an enormous factor in our 
national character. Two things she has to under- 
stand : What art is to the household, and what the 
household is to art ; then, using her power to the full 
extent, she can lift her race in great sweeps of progress 
towards the higher living we all so much look for, 
and so little work for. 

Pure and great art in the home will help to make 
a pure and great nation. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES. 

Hints on Household Taste, by Sir Charles E)astlake. 
The House Beautiful, by Clarence Cook. 
The House Comfortable, by Agnes Ormsbee, 



Decoration. 105 

" House Decoration," by Mary Gay Humphreys ; chap. xv. in 

The Woman's Book. 
House Decoration, by Rhoda and Agnes Garrett. 
Art and the Formation of Taste, by Lucy Crane. 
Lectures on Art, by William Morris. 
Hopes and Fears for Art, by William Morris. 
Woman's Handiwork in Modem Homes, by Constance Cary 

Harrison. 
Outlines of the History of Art, by Dr. Wilhelm Lubke, edited 

by Clarence Cook. 
The History of Ancient Art, from the German of John 

Wincklemann. 
The Two Paths : Lectures on Art and its Application to Dec- 
oration and Manufactures, by John Ruskin. 
Hand-book of Greek Archeology, by A. S. Murray. " Mural 

Decoration," pp. 348-444. 
Hand-book of Pottery and Porcelain, by Hodder Westropp. 
History of Ancient Pottery, by Samuel Birch. 
A Short History of Tapestry, by Eugene Muntz, translated by 

Miss Louisa A. Davis. 
^/Esthetics, by Eugene Veron. 
The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States, by Edwin 

Atlee Barber. 
" Domestic Decoration," by A. F. Oakey. Harper's Magazine, 

vol. Ixviii., p. 579. 
"American Decorative Art," by M. G. Humphreys. Art 

Journal, vol. xxxvi., p. 325. 
" Decoration and Furnishing," by C. F. Armytage. American 

Architect, vol. xviii., p. 116. 
Decorative Decorations, by G. H. Ellwanger. 
Practical Designing — Carpets, Alex Millar ; Woven Fabrics, 

Ar. Silver. Pottery, Wilton P. Rix ; Tiles, Owen 

Carter ; Metal Work, R. LI. B. Rathbone. 
Home Handicrafts, edited by Chas. Peters. 
Decoration and Furniture of Town Houses, by Robt. W. Edis. 
Art in the House, by Jacob Von Falke (trans, by Chas. C. 

Perkins). 
Album of Decorative Figures, by J. Moyr Smith. 
Hand-book of Ornament, by Franz Sales Meyer, 



io6 



Household Economics, 



Decorator and Furnisher, New York. 

" Modern Decoration," Illustrated Monthly, Int. News Co., 

New York. 
House Beautiful, by W. C. Gannett. 
^Esthetic Principles, by H. Marshall, 1890. 
American Architecture, by Montgomery Schuyler. 
Evolution cf Decorative Art, by H. Balfour. 
Birth and Development of Ornament, by Hulrne. 
Renaissance Architecture and Ornament in Spain, by A. N. 

Prentice. 
Pottery and Porcelain, from early times down to the Philadephia 

Exhibition, by Charles Wyllys Elliot. 
The Kabbala, or, The True Science of Light, together with a 

chapter on Light in the Vegetable Kingdom, by S. Pancoast, 

M.D., R. Worthington. 
The Principles of Light and Color, by Edwin D. Babbitt. 
Light, by John Tyndall, D. Appleton & Co. 




CHAPTER VI. 

FURNISHING. 

Organic Relation of Furniture to Humanity — Man Manufac- 
tures Extensions of his Body while the Animals Grow 
Them — Laws of Construction — Use and Beauty — Practical 
Conditions — Destructibility— Relative Value of Materials : 
Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal — Limitations of Applied 
Beauty — Essential Principles— Use — Ease and Economy — 
Evolution of House Furniture : the Seat, the Couch, the 
Table, the Cupboard, the Vessel — Vessel, Utensil, Tool — 
History, Distribution, Present Status — Relation to Class, 
Industry, Wealth, Sex, Age— Children's Furniture — Car- 
pets, Rugs, and Cushions — Upholstery — Specialization and 
Personality in Furniture— Mobility as a Factor in Evo- 
lution — Ideals. 

'K have found already in our study of the 
house, an unbroken chain connecting the 
soul of man with the surface of the earth, 
and in this chain, furniture, which touches the house 
on one side and the body on the other, is an important 
link. The word furniture is used here in its larger 
sense, covering all the household appliances, all mova- 
bles, from the bedstead to the teaspoon. They are 
all part of the furnishing of the house ; all serve for the 
extension of human power and activity, and all are 
evolved by the same great law which gives us feet to 
stand on and teeth to chew with. L,et us follow for a 

107 




io8 Household Economics. 

moment the lines of development which have filled our 
moving wagons with household impedimenta. 

It is in this field that we find most fully exemplified 
that marvellous advantage of the human creature, who 
makes to himself innumerable ulterior conveniences in 
passive and active furniture, a writing-desk, for in- 
stance, being passive, a pen active, and thereby multi- 
plies and develops his power a thou sand- fold. All 
furniture is based on bodily needs ; and its value is to 
be measured by its right meeting of those needs. 

A chair is meant to sit on, and so rest the body without 
lowering it to the earth entirely ; so saving the exertion 
of getting up again. It is safer, easier, cleaner than 
lying on the floor. Originally, a mere stool, the back 
was added to further rest the trunk muscles, and the 
arms similarly. 

The literal fact of furniture being an extension of 
the body is easily enough shown. The human body of 
to-day is so constituted as to be able to receive such 
and such sensations, perform such and such labors, 
sustain such and such stress. It is an instrument vary- 
ing considerably from the body of the early savage, or 
of a lower animal. In some ways itis superior, in others 
inferior ; such as it is, it is conditioned upon the furni- 
ture which allows its varied activities. .If the human 
hand had to do all its work itself, as the monkey's paw- 
does, it would not be the human hand. If we dug with 
it, we should lose the finer susceptibilities of touch 
at once, and grow heavy claws. If we used it for spoon 
and fork, with teeth our only knives ; if we were forced 
to do a tenth part of the day's work " with our bare 
hands," we should soon have no " hands " to do it 
with. They would lose the distinctive characteristics 
which make them hands. The infinite subtlety of 



Furnishing. 109 

development shown in the special tools of some trades, 
needles for instance, paint, brushes, and the exquisite 
subdivisions of a dentist's tiny instruments, — these carry 
with them the hand of delicate and varied use. And 
were it not for such tools we should not have that hand 
as it is. The elephant's trunk and its one finger is a 
wonderful organ ; the flea has a good outfit of vivisect- 
ing tools in his mouth ; but there is nothing else in 
nature that approaches the human hand with its deriva- 
tives. That which makes it a hand instead of a paw 
is the capacity for varied use, and the capacity for 
varied use depends upon its tools. They are parts of 
the body, like patent detachable finger-nails, transposa- 
ble teeth, and the like. 

This being so, it is plain that the laws of construc- 
tion, their use and beauty, must be considered in con- 
tinuous regard to the human body. They have, of 
course, their own absolute condition besides; matters 
of durability have to be considered, as well as adapta- 
bility, and the relative value of different materials. 

To the household economist, the chair represents so 
much physical rest, modified, of course, by personality ; 
so much beauty of its own ; so much relation to other 
articles associated with it ; and so much durability. 
To the average purchaser, a chair is not judged surely, 
even by the first of these considerations, and the others 
are lost sight of altogether. 

Our forefathers who made things so strictly for use, 
and that governed as strictly by economy, missed but 
one factor of beauty, and that is ease. The beauty of 
any usable thing, from a leg to a ladle, is based on three 
conditions : use, ease, and economy. 

" You must have something to stand on, must you ? " 
says Nature. ''Very well, here's a leg. Doesn't 



no Household Economics. 

work easily? I'll fix it." And forthwith she adds 
joints and kneepans and all manner of ropes and 
pulleys to make it go. Then when it is strong to 
stand on and easy to use, she shears off all superflu- 
ities, and behold " how beautiful the limb is ! " 

The maker of the ladle is governed by the same con- 
siderations. It must be a perfect ladle to begin with ; 
it must conform in every curve and line to the comfort- 
able use of its holder, and it must have no needless 
weight or substance. Here is where certain ostenta- 
tious teaspoons fail of beauty — there is too much 
material for either our ease of use or their necessary 
durability, as well as often too much ornament for 
comfortable handling. The pitcher that does not pour 
well cannot be beautiful, though of gold ; the glass so 
frail that it needs to be under glass for protection is not 
beautiful in common use ; nor is the china whose easy 
use is its sure destruction. The spider-legged table 
and its insect family of chairs, the things that creak 
when we sit down and tip over when we get up, these 
are not beautiful. 

If a thing is of a light and frail appearance, as a bam- 
boo chair, it should also be so simple in its construction 
as not to suggest waste labor. And if a thing is rich 
in inlaid work or carving, it should be solid enough to 
endure time and strain, else its beauty carries a con- 
stant element of distress, and so ceases to be beauty. 

Beauty, be it observed, is not by any means a 
" mere matter of opinion." Beauty has its laws and 
dies upon the infringement thereof. It is quite possi- 
ble, of course, to believe an ugly thing to be beautiful, 
through association of ideas, false education, low per- 
ceptive faculties, and the like ; but because a thing 
seems to a person to be beautiful, it does not, by any 



Furnishing. Ill 

means, follow that it is so. Take, for instance, the 
African admiration for extremely fat women, the Chi- 
nese admiration for deformed feet, our own admiration 
for deformed waists; — that a given object conveys 
pleasure to the eye by no means proves it beautiful. 
We Americans, as a whole, have a low national taste 
and need much honest study before we can recognize 
true beauty. And even after we have learned a good 
deal about it, there remains the endlessly varied appli- 
cation according to our personal and industrial and 
social and economic limits. When it comes to house 
furniture, that, like home architecture, is modified by 
so many necessities as to make any clear, high beauty 
impossible. 

Suppose we begin to plan for parlor furniture : car- 
pet, tables, chairs, sofas, curtains, etc. Everything 
has to be modified by many considerations. If it is a 
family room, it must not offend the personal taste of 
any member of the family. The varied use of every 
article by many people modifies its possibilities im- 
mensely. If there are boys, a certain grade of furnish- 
ing follows ; if babies, another ; if cats and dogs, 
another. Furnishing depends. It depends on so many 
things that we cannot hope for high beauty in the 
ordinary household ; but still in certain rooms in some 
houses there might be noble furnishing ; in others, 
much that is pretty ; and in all, a harmony and sweet 
reasonableness now almost unknown. It is quite pos- 
sible also for each of us to learn to know good furniture 
when we see it, as well as good architecture. And if 
our household exigencies require cast-iron and tow- 
cloth things, to see to it that they be harmoniously 
constructed. 

L,et us consider in detail one article, say a chair. 



1 1 2 Household Economics. 

Being meant to support trie weight of the human body, 
the chair's personal beauty requires that it shall show 
power to do this, — and not greatly more. If a chair 
looks strong enough to support a weary elephant, it is 
not beautiful ; nor if it looks as though a cat's weight 
would strain it. Support is the first requisite of a 
chair. After that the relative comfort of the support 
enters into the beauty of the chair ; it must in all ways 
conform to its use. These demands complied with, it 
has minor considerations of its own. Not being al- 
ways occupied, it should not be so built as to suggest 
too painfully the absent sitter ; a self-respecting chair 
has some character of its own. Grace and power in its 
lines, fine material, true decoration, — these may make 
the chair a thing of beauty in itself, even when empty. 
But none of them must ever interfere with the comfort 
of the user, the chair's raison <V Hre. 

This reasoning holds good for every article of furni- 
ture. First, its use to man ; second, its own laws of 
construction and decoration ; third, — and here only the 
individual can dictate, — its relation to the thousand 
needs of household life. One generalization may be 
permitted on this line. Knowing that household needs 
are various and conflicting, and so require a low com- 
mon denominator, no article in a room for general use 
should be of any marked eccentricity. The private 
room may show more of this ; but high specialization 
in furniture calls for the same specialization in use, 
such as the peculiarly personal or professional use of 
the dentist's chair, barber's chair, invalid's chair. 
For household use, certain low- toned harmonies are 
best : things restful, useful, quietly beautiful, not too 
pronounced. A Bengal tiger on a hearth-rug, for in- 
stance, — one of the favorite designs of rug in many 



Furnishing. 113 

middle-class English houses, — can never be considered 
as soothing, and it is happily being replaced by some- 
thing less suggestive of barbarism. 

The background for all furnishing comes under the 
head of decoration, and will be studied in detail in the 
larger course to which this volume opens. For the 
furniture itself there are always three principal consid- 
erations : (1) the size of the apartment in which it is 
to be placed ; (2) the purpose of the room ; (3) the 
object or use of the articles themselves. To these con- 
siderations others must be made subservient. 

Then follow certain practical considerations : the na- 
ture of the materials to be employed, mineral, vege- 
table, and animal, their relative durability and destructi- 
bility. The nursery, for instance, or other room which 
children are to occupy with some sense of space and 
comfort, demands absolutely different treatment from 
that of the drawing-room given chiefly to the reception 
of guests. 

Until within a generation, a " set " of furniture has 
been regarded as a necessity for a well furnished parlor, 
and the average housekeeper, having little money to 
spend, invested it in hair-cloth, — the most hideous as 
well as the most durable of all fabrics that the mind of 
man has ever evolved. In its natural colors, a species 
of iron-gray, it was a trifle less objectionable ; but in- 
scrutable desires on the part of the buyer brought the 
dyer to the front and gave inky and glossy blackness as 
the result. Repulsive in color, slippery in finish to that 
degree that no mortal could do aught but slide and slip 
uneasily on the cold and ungracious surface, — the New 
England mind seized upon this as the ideal, and for 
generations held to it with fervor. The rep set fol- 
lowed, — usually green or dark red, — and this was a 



1 1 4 Household Economics. 

great step forward. Gradually, witli the slow develop- 
ment of a faint sense of beauty, cretonne and other fab- 
rics have come into use, while the growing familiarity 
with Japanese and other Eastern fabrics is teaching us 
the value of an admixture of mineral material, as gold 
and silver, or copper thread. 

The cottage requires a lighter order of furniture than 
the mansion ; but this does not mean flimsiness of con- 
struction or poor material for covering. Wool invites 
moths, and in our furnace-heated houses where life is 
made easy lor them, wool is always liable to their at- 
tacks. But there are beautiful combinations, very 
durable in quality, in silk, or cotton, or linen, as well 
as in silk and wool. It would be a delight at this very 
point to take up room by room with the best type of 
furniture for each ; but once more our limitations hold 
us back, and I can do little more than give a few of the 
genuinely good and helpful authorities: Sir Charles 
I vast lake's Hints on Household Taste still ranks as one 
of the best and most suggestive of these. The Maga- 
zine of Art, the Art Journal, and a few other art period- 
icals frequently give elaborate descriptions of artistic 
furniture with illustrations, sometimes with schemes of 
furnishing adapted to varying purses. All these the 
student can begin at any time to study, with careful 
attention to the models given in Litchfield's Illustrated 
History of Fu m Hit re . 

The evolution of house furniture from its primal ele- 
ments is a simple process, still going on about us. In 
the cave of our forefathers was the ledge and the boul- 
der offering themselves invitingly to sit on, lie on, put 
things on ; and in the curved hand of our forefather 
bringing water to his lips, was the prototype of the 
dish. Iycaf, shell, husk, pericarp ; he used what na- 



Furnishing. 115 

ture gave him first, and then, of bark and skin, of clay 
and straw, began to fit new uses with new utensils. 

So long as the hunter and shepherd ran about after 
their dinners, no high evolution of furniture appeared ; 
the lacustrine population made more progress, and the 
agriculturist with his wealth of stores and permanent 
storehouse soon evoked a corresponding wealth of tools 
and vessels. 

It is the multiplication of human things, — really the 
secondary powers of the wonderful body of ours — which 
we are following. In weapon and garment came man's 
first step : skin upon skin for warmth, tool within tool 
for power. And then, as things increased, the need for 
things to put things on, things to put things in, things 
to make things with. In the subtle manifold special- 
ization of our great factories, you will find machines to 
make tools to make machines to make tools again, — an 
endless chain ; but in our homes we are comparatively 
simple yet. The sewing-machine is our most complex 
development, and perhaps a coffee-mill or so. Other- 
wise, we have as yet the " first power" of furniture 
only ; just " things" in their simple immediate relation 
to the body. Primitive furniture was very near its an- 
tecedent ledge and boulder : heavy, durable, immovable. 
The bed was often built into the house ; as we find it 
to-day in Northern countries ; the table stood finally 
in place ; the chairs were things to haul around. The 
original cupboard — a crack in the rock or hole in the 
tree — no more advanced than the squirrel's — grew 
through various stages of closetry and shelving into 
our varied ramifications of movable wardrobes, book- 
cases, etageres, and whatnots. 

When we say " evolution," it means always the 
same thing : ' ' A process of development from indefi- 



1 1 6 Household Economics. 

nite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent hete- 
rogeneity by a series of differentiations and speciali- 
zations." This is the story of furniture. 

The British Museum contains six chairs, the earliest 
examples of the ancient Egyptian theories, and all 
about the same height as our present chairs. A beau- 
tiful one is of ebony turned in the lathe and inlaid with 
collars and dice of ivory, the seat being of heavy cane 
slightly hollowed. Another of turned and polished 
rosewood has a seat of skin and folds precisely like our 
modern folding-chair, but much more securely. They 
chose heads of animals for ornamentation, as the 
Assyrians did, and their couches, tables, and cupboards 
were all heavy, solid, and finely carved, the seats being 
upholstered or embroidered with the richest materials. 
Both the Greeks and the Romans used folding-chairs, 
carrying them in the chariot for use in the Forum, 
lecture halls, and the baths. Form and construction 
remained much the same, the Greek predominating 
and perfection of finish being regarded as the first 
essential, being in each case according to the material 
employed. 

The renaissance in art made great changes in archi- 
tecture, and all this transition was exemplified in the 
furniture. The princes and nobles of Rome, Venice, 
and Milan ordered and often designed the most sumptu- 
ous chairs and tables, cabinets, beds, and chests, and as 
an almost uniform training was given to the artists who 
resorted to Italy, the work done by them in Spain, 
Flanders, and Germany, especially under the reign of 
Charles the Fifth, can hardly be distinguished from 
that of Italian artists in the same period. Henry the 
Eighth in England, and Francis the First in France, 
encouraged this revival of the arts ; but the beauty of 



Furnishing. 117 

this sixteenth-century work declined in the seventeenth 
century, — nor has it had serious attempt at reproduction 
until the present day, when fixed and often stupid and 
unlovely forms are giving place to genuine artistic 
designs. 

The construction of a perfect chair means many 
things. Each part should be as perfectly united to the 
next as if it had grown in its place ; and this means 
well seasoned wood, exactly cut tennons and mortices, 
very hot glue of the best quality, and the proper press- 
ure in putting it together. lightness for ease in mov- 
ing is another requisite. If carving is used, it should 
be absolutely subordinate to the outline and the com- 
fort of the sitter, never interfering with the dress, nor 
being liable to breakage from having salient points, 
masses, or ornaments exposed. The same general laws 
apply to couches and beds, and the ancients worked 
them out at once, held to them rigorously, and would 
look with consternation at our veneered, warped, mis- 
shapen products, made to sell, and utterly cheap and 
mean in expression. 

The sensitive touch of the human hand must be in 
anything that holds high artistic quality, and the factory 
can never give us distinctive work. As we learn once 
more this law known thousands of years ago, each of 
us will want at least one piece of furniture designed by 
an artist, — by ourselves if we have artistic perception, 
and in time we shall all return to the earlier ideals, 
learn the place of ornament, and gain once more a 
distinct conception of a bed, a chair, a couch, a table. 
The evolution of each is as clearly traced as that of the 
chair, and in a volume on The Home Life of the 
Greeks and Romans, one finds the history of all they 
regarded as being called furniture. 



1 1 8 Household Economics. 

The most perfect adaptation to the use required of it, 
and the utmost beauty of line and finish, characterized 
even the simplest and humblest piece of furniture or bit 
of pottery ; and to gain again the beauty of these two 
essential points, in our modern work, we must study 
the creations of the past and learn the thought of the 
beauty-loving Greek and of the nation that followed in 
his train. 

In its intimate relation to human life, furniture forms 
a direct expression of the class, ' ' age, sex, and condi- 
tion of servitude ' ' of its user. Each class varying in 
needs, varies commensurately in its furnishing ; an- 
other evidence of its place as an extension of human 
power and activity. As the human creature varies and 
develops, his furniture varies and develops, in absolute 
relation to himself. 

Poverty, luxury, intelligence, — all are shown in the 
furniture ; the upward growth manifesting itself quickly 
in luxuriant outbursts of new things ; and the down- 
ward, in the slow processes of unrepaired decay, or the 
quick stripping of sale or confiscation. 

It is our misfortune — the misfortune of those of us 
who have approximately what furniture we want — 
that our evolution into heterogeneity is neither definite 
nor coherent ; that we do not grasp the principles 
which relate the development of furniture to life, and 
therefore the orderly arrangement of our rooms and 
the carefulness of our dusting do not give truth or 
peace to discordant collections of upholstered articles 
having neither intrinsic nor relative beauty. Here, as 
usual, the higher specialization of man's work has 
given him more perfect furniture. A finely-appointed 
office or study with its desk breathing embodied busi- 
ness, its chair of complex possibilities and perfect com- 



Furnishing. 1 1 9 

fort, and its revolving book-case that seems so glad to 
serve the wish of the master ; this shows a more ad- 
vanced degree of furnishing than is often possible in 
the home. 

In this fact, also, we find one of the divisions on sex 
lines which is so unfortunate in its results, and which 
our women would do well to study from a sociological 
point of view. I^et the student of household economics, 
whether practical or critical, carefully examine the 
kitchen of a buffet car or of a ship ; let them note 
with the dispassionate eye of the student what a labora- 
tory is, how a store is arranged, the elements involved 
in church furniture, school furniture, etc. L,et them 
carefully note the smooth conveniences of a, well-ap- 
pointed club-house ; and then let them return to the 
average drawing-room or parlor, and, — well, I think 
meditation would ensue. 

Why does a man prefer a leather-covered, stuffed easy- 
chair to a rattan rocker with a pink ribbon woven into 
its orificial decoration, and a tidy pinned to its back ? 
The preference is not a matter of personal opinion 
merely ; nor is it a matter of sex, necessarily ; — your 
woman of business does not admire the cobwebby 
rocking-chair above the smooth comfort of the other 
one. The leather chair rests the body, does not stick 
to the clothes, does not in any way obtrude itself upon 
the notice, does not adhere to our backs when we get 
up, does not tip over when we touch it. The leather 
chair is a piece of true evolution rightly modified by 
present needs. It is not so nobly beautiful as the 
Greek chair or, the Roman chair ; but it is beautiful in 
its right service of existing man, and so, legitimately 
beautiful, after all. 

How came to pass the other thing with the tidy on 



120 Hottsehold Economics. 

it ? What evolution has bestowed upon us the museum 
of tip-overables in our rooms which should breathe 
only of rest and pleasure ? 

The process is something like this. The average 
woman's life is so spent in conflicting interests and 
industries that she cannot develop any true taste for 
large truths of relation. She is used to unrelated ac- 
tivities and their unrelated utensils ; used to going 
from stove to dish, from dish to duster, from duster to 
sewing machine, with one hand rocking the cradle all 
the time ; and it does not therefore distress her to see a 
ribbon on the parlor coal hod, a gilded milking-stool 
painted with pansies, or a rolling-pin covered with vel- 
vet. Relation is not in her life, and she does not feel 
the need of it in her furniture. She herself must an- 
swer a multitude of needs ; why should not the table 
carry everything we choose to put upon it ? 

If she were sensitive to the discord around her, she 
would die sooner than she does, — which is needless. 
Moreover, our women, in their comparatively sheltered 
lives, develop more of personality, whim, caprice, pass- 
ing and changeful preference, — just as children do,— 
a thing that more general life modifies in man. 

It does not occur to a man to express his personality 
in his furniture. He does not "like it this way " and 
that way, and the other way ; and change it about for 
variety's sake, as she does. He got it for a purpose ; 
placed it for a purpose, and uses it for a purpose ; 
" liking " it only as it serves his purpose. Therefore, 
he does not tire of it, and it does not tire the beholder. 

Now lest it may be thought that I wish to turn 
pleasant homes into a howling wilderness of leather 
and hardwood, let me hasten to say that, within the 
limits of easily learned artistic laws, this very person- 



Furnishing. 121 

ality and variability, the modification to multiple use 
and occupancy, the teeming suggestion of youth and 
age, and all sweet, natural living, — all these are just what 
gives house furniture its charm. Just as woman her- 
self, comparatively unspecialized and so still promising 
all things, serving as the artist's and the sculptor's type 
of great thoughts, — standing for the figure of Liberty, 
Justice, Truth — because she is not too closely fitted for 
a special task, but expresses humanity in the abstract ; 
so our household furnishing which does not speak of 
work but of rest ; not of concentration but of diffusion ; 
not of where we are going to but of where we came 
from, — breathe calmness and beauty and peace. 

Two things most needed in our conception of right 
house furnishing are these : (1) The elimination of 
all that speaks of toil. Home is peculiarly a place of 
rest ; though the birthplace of all industries. All the 
special furniture that speaks of special task should 
be as far as possible banished, or at least concealed. 
The large relation of these bodies or parts of bodies 
should be considered, and the whole scheme speak of 
the highest harmony with our highest life. 

(2) A thing of vital importance, yet little thought 
of. While our home is from the beginning and most 
essentially "the place of children," yet we do not 
either in building or in furnishing allow for their needs 
and pleasures. It is a peculiar oversight, and one 
which will be remedied when the household economist 
has voice in the choice or building of the home and its 
furniture. As it is now, we who were brought up in 
homes where our own childhood was unplanned for, 
and who going to the new nest, think more of Cupid 
and Hymen, and possibly of Mrs. Grundy, than we 
do of the family the home is meant to shelter, make no 



122 Household Economics. 

provision in our purchasing for the larger half of the 
occupants. There are more children at any one time 
than there are grown up people, we know, — and they 
are more important. And they are " always with us." 
Children as a permanent class have yet to be considered, 
but such they undoubtedly are. Should not then the 
furnishing of the child's home — all the home the child 
ever has — be planned with some consideration of his 
needs and pleasure ? As it is, the most he can hope 
for is a " high chair " to bring him to the adult table, 
— and possibly a little rocker to hug and fall down 
stairs with. 

The children " must get up off that floor," of course, 
for though it is the child's natural resting place, it is 
not arranged for his health and comfort ; they sit in 
people's laps for a while, or struggle about uneasily in 
big chairs and sofas, or disport themselves on stools 
and hassocks under protest ; being harried meanwhile 
with constant directions as to how to sit, and reiterated 
commands to " keep quiet," until they can go out of 
doors or to bed. 

Even when they are out they are usually cautioned 
not to sit on the ground, but vainly — thank Heaven ! 

Now I do not mean that a human home should be 
furnished like a kindergarten, but that there should 
be, so to speak, a kindergarten in every home or near 
one. 

The child should have his furniture as well as we. 
And furthermore, knowing that our homes are the 
homes of children we should not fill them with articles 
of constant temptation to the normal activities of child- 
hood. A human home is not a museum ; it is a place 
to live in, peaceably and peacefully, young and old, — 
more especially the young. 



Furnishing. 123 

Fortunately, this need is being in degree recognized, 
and furniture of good quality is being made for chil- 
dren's use, from the little enamelled iron and brass 
bed (the most rational type of bedstead), to the small 
bureaux, tables, chairs, and other fittings that belong 
with them. 

The room in which much living is done ; living with 
its innumerable modern demands, — requires substantial 
as well as beautiful furniture. And no one has better 
given the essentials than William Morris, who in an 
essay on " The Beauty of I^ife " in his Lectures on Art, 
describes what he regards as essential to the ordinary 
sitting-room of a healthy person : 

" First, a book-case with a great many books in it ; next a 
table that will keep steady when you write or work at it ; then 
several chairs that you can move, and a bench that you can sit 
or lie upon ; next, a cupboard with drawers ; next, unless the 
cupboard or the book-case be very beautiful with painting or 
carving, you will want pictures or engravings such as you 
can afford — only not stop-gaps, but real works of art on the 
wall ; or else the wall itself must be ornamented with some 
beautiful and restful pattern ; we shall also want a vase or two 
to put flowers in, which latter you must have sometimes, espe- 
cially if you live in a town. Then, there will be the fire-place of 
course, which in our climate is bound to be the chief object in 
the room. That is all we shall want, especially if the floor be 
good ; if it be not, as by the way in a modern house it is pretty 
certain not to be, I admit that a small carpet which can be 
bundled out of the room in two minutes will be useful, and we 
must also take care that it is beautiful, or it will annoy us 
terribly." 

This last is a trifle extreme, but for the rest, I think 
we may admit that both children and their elders would 
be far more at their ease if every item were carried out 
literally. 



124 Household Economics. 

I have been in houses where from top to bottom there 
was absolutely not one spot where one could really 
live, since beds were too fine to lie upon, chairs too 
frail to sit on, tables too shaky and uncertain for com- 
fortable writing or drawing, and all things over-orna- 
mented, and generally calculated to spoil temper and 
shorten life. Can we suppose the child with his sensi- 
tive organization is not tormented and hampered in the 
same way ? For them, if for no other reason, we need 
to study the laws of furnishing and give them models 
that will form taste and make cheap vulgarity ever 
more impossible. 

There is often more art in a cheap woodcut or proc- 
ess reproduction, than in miles of the high-colored 
horrors that do duty as pictures. Good art in photo- 
graph, engraving, etching and cast is possible for all. 
It needs only the educated sense, and towards that we 
approximate more and more each year. We shall 
study it by and b}^ with delight. 

The factor of mobility, not only in the evolution of 
furniture but also in our relation to it, is an important 
one to the student. Remembering the principle that 
the value of human production is in proportion to its 
durability and usability, — to the number of people 
who can use a thing and the thing for which they 
can use it, — we see that the value of a special arti- 
cle of furniture is greatly limited by personality. If a 
person is peculiarly shaped, and his chair is peculiarly 
shaped to fit him, the chair is less valuable as a chair ; 
it would sell for less at an auction. On the other hand, 
it would cost more to have it made and it is of far more 
value to him by reason of its very peculiarity. 

There is a line to be drawn here in reference to 
personality. If we do one kind of work and are accus- 



Furnishing. 125 

tomed to one tool only, there grows up a certain inti- 
mate relationship between that tool and ourselves which 
greatly adds to its usefulness. But should we lose 
it and be forced to use a slightly different tool, the 
change detracts from our usefulness. To have our 
comfort or our power depend on our own special furni- 
ture may thus be thought to be a limitation of use in 
the line of racial retrogression. 

This statement has its limitations. Merely mechan- 
cal work may change its tools at will, though it is 
found that the more skill enters in, the more the work- 
man inclines to his own tool. When it comes to the 
higher realm where art speaks, we do not need to 
recall what the Stradivarius means to the violinist, 
every fibre in it the spirit of past niusic and the prom- 
ise of more exquisite tone to come. For the literary 
worker, his own desk, his own pen, are a part of the 
ease of expression, and the pen seems often to have 
taken 011 powers of its own. And so, up to a certain 
point, we have the right to hold to our own and recog- 
nize the spiritual significance of our own. Subtle 
eSvSences that man will presently analyze and know, 
have passed into all that we use, no less than into the 
very walls of our houses. The " sensitive " knows on 
entering a room the quality of the occupants, past and 
present, and this power for the few is the guaranty, 
not only of like power to come for others, but of a 
knowledge that will in time make all dwellings holy, 
and every vessel fit for sacramental wine. 

When these laws and principles are better under- 
stood, we shall find life a nobler, sweeter, easier process. 
The child surrounded by beauty and order will grow 
up smoother and rounder in character, less irritated 
and rubbed awry. The adult living among orderly 



126 Household Economics. 

and beautiful forms, all peacefully serving their uses, 
will find a clear atmosphere, either for work or rest, — 
and the improved grade of humanity so fostered will 
manifest itself in kindred improvement in every other 
branch of sociologic progress. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES. 

" House Furnishing," by Mary Gay Humphreys. The Woman's 

Book, chap. xv. 
The Home Life of the Greeks and Romans, by Kuhl and Kouer, 

chapter on furniture. 
" Furniture," by Clarence Cook. Scribner's Magazine, vol. x., 

p. 161 ; vol. ii., pp. 342, 809 ; vol. xii., pp. 168, 796. 
"Furniture," by Philip Gilbert Hamerton. MacmillatPs 

Magazine, vol. viii., p. 138. 
"The Art of Furnishing," Cornhill, vol. xxxi., p. 535. 
" Good and Bad Furniture." All the Year Round, vol. xxviii., 

p. 42. 
Arts and Crafts Essays, 1893. 
Wood Carvings and Furniture in the Style Louis XV., by A. 

Hoffmann. 
Furniture, by F. S. Meyer. 

Practical Decorative Upholstery, by F. A. Moreland. 
A History of Furniture, by Albert Jacquemart. Trans, from 

the French, and edited by Mrs. Bury Palliser. 
The Claims of Decorative Art, by Walter Crane. 
Polychromatic Decoration as Applied to Buildings in the Med- 

iceval Styles, by W. and G. Audsley. 
Household Art, edited by Candace Wheeler. 
Illustrated History of Furniture, by Frederick Litchfield. 
Colonial Furniture of New England, by Irving Whitall Lyon. 
Furnishing and Decoration, by G. F. Armytage. American 

Architect, vol. xviii., p. 116. 
Domestic Furniture, by G. T. Robinson. Art Journal, vol. 
xxxvi., p. 373. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HOUSEHOLD INDUSTRIES. 

Structure and Function — Functional Development of Society 
and Domestic Industries — Order of Appearance of Domes- 
tic Industries and Progress toward Higher Specialization — 
Relation of Work to Worker — Effect of Special Industries 
on Body and Mind — Exercise more Important than Envi- 
ronment ; Action than Reaction — The Division of Labor — 
Sex in Industry — Distinction one of Degree, not of Kind — 
Jane-of-all-Trades — Arrested Development and Suppressed 
Specialization — Effect of Racial Growth — Present Condi- 
tion of Domestic Industries in Relation to SocialjEconomy 
and Personal Development — The Two Remaining Func- 
tions, Nutritive and Excretory. 




E have come now to the second division of our 

work together. 

In the first lecture I spoke of this course 
as treating of the statistics and dynamics of household 
economy, or more closely, of the structure and func- 
tions of the household. The preceding six lectures 
cover the structure from the house in its relation to the 
earth's surface, to the last touch of furniture and 
decoration in its relation to the human body and the 
human soul. In the remaining six lectures we shall 
study the functions of this household organism ; those 
activities on which it is conditioned, — without which it 
would not exist. 

127 



128 Household Economics. 

No part of our subject so plainly shows the relation 
of household economics to social economics, — the latter 
in all its varied development being the natural outcome 
of the former. 

We are apt to speak of the home as the unit of the 
state ; it is not that in our accepted sense at all, but it 
is the parent of the state ; or, more properly, the seed 
from which that mighty tree sprang first and from 
which it is constantly renewed. 

The state and its economy is the larger and higher 
form of living, resultant from the household and its 
economy ; and they interact one upon another unceas- 
ingly. All the activities and affections which maintain 
social life had their origin in domestic life ; all the mag- 
nificent work now done by men together for the service 
of the world was once done by men apart for the ser- 
vice of their own homes. 

Before following this line more closely, let us look 
for a moment at the functional nature of society itself, 
to see what is its reason for being. In the economic 
sense, society is an organism built on the same plan and 
for the same purpose as any other organism ; namely, 
by co-ordinate service and relation to secure more food 
with less exertion, and so set free nervous energy for 
higher development. More safety also is a primal ob- 
ject ; more shelter ; the saving of labor. Society is 
just such a convenience to people as a comfortable 
body, with teeth and claws and warm fur is to poor 
huddled masses of primordial cells. Its evolution follows 
that same agreeable formula we know so well ; finding in 
the savage state its condition of ' ' indefinite incoherent 
homogeneity," and in our manifold subtle ties of sub- 
divided labor, each man doing his fractional share in the 
great concert, its " definite coherent heterogeneity." 



Household Industries. 129 

This process in society has been identical with the 
process in the single organism — the cells, combining, 
assume varied place and work, and so develop a high 
degree of special power by virtue of the division of 
labor and exchange of product. And as in the lower 
organism the primal functions are simple, long consist- 
ing only of the external and internal processes of nu- 
trition, — so society's main business at first was the 
gathering and distributing of food. The little organ- 
ism, pressed by conditions, developed organs of defence 
and offence. So did society ; and primitive society, 
like other low forms of life, lived in incessant warfare, 
having its analogy in the industrial warfare of to-day. 

The highly developed organism, with its subtle in- 
terplay of function, its elaborate plan and perfect 
accord in action, its intense activity of special sense, 
with its high value, is perfectly paralleled by a civilized 
society, where a thousand industries serve one another, 
and the highly specialized arts and professions lead and 
direct the industries. 

In this process the household leads the world in the 
sense of coming first, — not in the sense of keeping 
ahead. On the contrary, it remains far behind, and 
at present fails largely of its use to society because of 
its retarded industrial development. 

Primarily, when the state was not, the family was 
the state ; a small and necessarily limited form of gov- 
ernment, but essential to begin with. Within its little 
round came into being the parent arts and crafts : all 
those incipient industries, fictile, textile, and the others, 
—the constructive industry of man applied to the ma- 
terials around him ; wood, stone, straw, clay, skin and 
fibre, metal and mineral. 

To transmute the outside world into humanness, — 
9 



1 30 Household Economics. 

to turn these varied constituents into new forms, mak- 
ing them part of the organic structure of humanity, 
and part of a higher and more complex nutrition, — this 
is the use of human industry, and it began at home. 
Also the woman began it. Representing, as she does, 
the anabolic or constructive energy in nature, it is 
natural that she should begin to produce new forms of 
food and clothes and shelter ; creating and conserving, 
while yet the man followed only his primal tendency, 
the katabolic, — to destroy and waste. 

Drummond has shown us how the mother's love is 
mother to all love — to all the human feeling that makes 
our life possible. We have further to see how the 
mother's industry is parent to all industry. The same 
spirit that urges the mud-wasp to enclose insects with 
her eggs that the new-made baby grub may have to eat, 
and that drives the multitude of ants and bees, — co- 
operative mothers all, — to toil endlessly to provide for 
the coming young, — this it is which has grown into 
the father's heart from the mother's and that now fills 
the granaries and warehouses of the world. 

Similarly, too, the first human industries are of ex- 
actly the same order as the animal ones ; methods of 
obtaining and preserving food. The very first, — get- 
ting food, — still finds its expression in the great primal 
industry of fishing. Hunting as an industry is not 
worth mentioning now. It remains with us only in 
the form of a ' ' sport " ; a depraved survival of a low 
exercise. Keeping food alive, the next stage, devel- 
oped into the pastoral era of humanity, and still sur- 
vives in our vast and complex enginery of meat supply. 
Then came agriculture, first practised in relation to the 
home, and growing to our world market of production 
and distribution. Women began it to feed their young. 



Household Industries, 131 

This is the limit of our food-supplying industries. 
There are no more things to eat, and their higher 
development as social industries rests on their extra- 
domestic exchange and distribution. 

The abundant and preservable supplies of food which 
agriculture brought demanded vessels, bins, store- 
houses, — and these all began in the patient labors of 
the savage mother for her young. The original selec- 
tion and construction of shelter, both for family and 
stores, was hers also, with all its growth into archi- 
tecture ; and the meeting of primitive domestic needs, 
in furniture as in utensils, gave rise to all our varied 
manufactures in those lines. Clothing was for long 
her absolute field ; but that, too, is now a world indus- 
try, as it should be. 

The higher and more varied arts and sciences, not 
to be traced directly to the home, are but further differ- 
entiations of energy along lines of work which did start 
there. Ship-building and commerce, for instance, arose 
from the superfluity of food produced with the develop- 
ment of agriculture and from the preservation of that 
food for future or distant use. Similarly, the physi- 
cian is as direct an evolution from the savage mother 
nursing her child, as is the chef or the chemist from 
her humble processes of cooking. 

The law of evolution works in industry, art, science, 
language, religion, — everything that lives j and all hu- 
man life began, as it still begins, at home. 

No wonder we love the word. It has more in it than 
the wildest sentimentalist has dreamed of yet ; so much 
more that our ordinary attitude toward it, compared 
with what it should be, is one of gross disrespect. 
Nevertheless, let us remember that its value is as a 
place of birth of all these things, — and that the home 



132 Household Economics. 

of to-day is shorn of half its dignity and power by our 
forced retention and restriction of certain industries 
therein — industries long since ready for higher devel- 
opment. 

As these industries appeared in the household, one 
by one, budding out from within, so they grew out 
and away from it, falling into the hands of man, who 
is the natural avenue of specialization, in that his ge- 
neric functions do not keep him, as the woman's keep 
her, necessarily more potential. Take one branch, for 
instance — say the making of vessels, the potter's art. 
The primitive woman made for her family uses primi- 
tive vessels, of primitive materials, for primitive needs. 
Alone, she could do no more ; and the primal mother 
was necessarily alone. The evolution of an art re- 
quires, like every other evolution, more than the mere 
repetition of individual efforts. It requires with each 
step of advance, co-ordination more and more com- 
plete, and such accumulation of energy and material 
as shall make experiment possible. The higher or- 
ganism can make experiments that would destroy the 
lower ; can sustain exertions and bear extremes. It 
has larger margin, and therefore larger gains. Hence 
these liberal arts grew out from their individual func- 
tion and became social functions ; sometimes retaining 
a hold in the earlier place, and sometimes not. 

Agriculture remains partly special at the same time 
that it is so infinitely general ; the same farmer may 
raise food for his family while he also raises food for 
' ' the market ' ' ; but few families make their own dishes 
or their own shoes. The progress from the coarse clay 
bowl of the primitive woman to all our marvels and 
mysteries of Dresden, Satsuma, and Royal Worcester, 
is one which requires constant division of labor and 



Household Industries. 133 

co-ordinate service ; a progress which demands the 
special place to work in, tools to work with, and life 
to work. Each industry must be separated from the 
others and pursued by itself with united effort by many 
people before it can become great. 

Bven where the pursuit is followed at home, as in 
many Oriental products, the specialization is there, 
growing from father to son in long lines of cumulating 
excellence, and carefully preserved from cross currents 
of other occupation. Here comes in a question of ab- 
sorbing interest ; one just beginning to dawn on the 
social economist, and coming home to the household 
economist with profound importance, — namety, the re- 
lation of work to the worker ; the effects of special 
industries upon body and mind. 

In its superficial form, this question is brought before 
us in the increasing discontent of labor the world over, 
and in our own branch of study in the increasing dis- 
content of women with their special labor in the home. 
No scientific analysis, that I know of, has been made 
of this subject ; no inquiry into the deeper significance 
of this wide revolt against given forms of labor, the 
expression women chiefly notice being in domestic 
service. 

The moralist replies loudly to the effect that the more 
disagreeable a thing is the better it is for us ; and the 
scientist contents himself with some muttered remarks 
about the " struggle for existence" and the "survival 
of the fittest." 

Let us make a distinction here which we need in our 
special stud}^ and which may be a boon to the social 
economist. It is this : The organic activities of society 
are only a struggle for existence, in the sense that the 
activities of our heart, lungs, and liver are a struggle 



134 Household Economics. 

for existence. The smooth and orderly interaction of 
social industries is as important to our social existence 
as a good digestion and respiration are important to 
our existence. When we breathe with difficulty or 
digest with pain, we do not dismiss the fact airily as 
part of the struggle for existence, and leave the sur- 
vival of lungs or stomach to take care of itself. The 
harmonious development of industry is of vital impor- 
tance to the life of society, and we should attend care- 
fully to its processes. 

That for the scientist. For the moralist this : He 
says that all labor is honorable ; that it makes no dif- 
ference what we do, if only we do it in the right spirit ; 
and to women especially, that the nobility of their task 
fully counterbalances any ignobility of methods. To 
which let us reply that labor is a human function, that 
function makes organ, that organ is developed accord- 
ing to exercise, that exercise is what modifies us most ; 
— that what we do makes us what zve are. 

We have been studying the effect of material sur- 
roundings upon character, and find it to be deep and 
constant ; but man is modified far more by exertion 
than by environment. To be surrounded by beauty 
and right construction is of value ; but far more valua- 
ble is it to make things beautiful and right. Better 
make palaces and live in a hut than to make huts and 
live in a palace. Better make beautiful garments and 
live in rags, than to wear beautiful garments and make 
rags. Action is stronger than reaction on the human 
soul. The slow effect of right surroundings does not 
compare with the quick effect of right doing. 

With these facts in view, let us see if the kind or de- 
gree of industry practised by a human creature is of no 
importance. Does it make no difference to a man's 



Household Industries, 135 

character whether he be a butcher or a shepherd? 
Whether he is a soldier, or a tailor, or a priest ? Take 
that one familiar instance of the soldier. Here is a 
number of men widely dissimilar in birth and early 
training, taken when full grown and already showing 
marked divergence. They are forced to undergo the 
same conditions and perform the same actions for a 
period of years. Result, the soudikr, a sub-species 
of genus homo, most marked in character, physical and 
mental, easy to recognize and describe. Let it be said 
in passing, that the reason this can be done so well with 
the soldier is that the traits required are those common 
to primal humanity ; save the obedience and cleanliness, 
and these are perceptibly essential and violently en- 
forced. It is a case of reversion ; a crushing back of 
the frailer but higher development of society into dense 
early form for definite use ; noble and not to be lost 
sight of, as is the case with all primal functions. 

That which produces the soldier produces also the 
merchant, the mechanic, and the cook. The work 
makes the man, other conditions being equal. Not 
only does the kind of work affect the worker, but its 
degree. And this is where our household industries 
are involved most closely. The moralist who speaks 
so beautifully of the lofty rank of these labors of the 
home, is right and wrong in the same breath. 

All functional processes of humanity are essential, 
and so noble. Their rank, — if they have any, — de- 
pends on which way we count. The stomach is the 
oldest in the body, the kitchen is the oldest in humanity. 
Are they therefore noblest? The highly specialized 
brain is the latest in the body, the highly specialized 
administration the latest in humanity. Are they 
therefore least noble? Is the instant provision for 



136 Household Economics. 

immediate and special needs a nobler task than the 
provision for ultimate and general needs ? Is the work 
of the cook really superior to that of the statesman ? 

Ought we not to cease prating of nobility in labor ; 
see that all is essential ; recognize that man's path 
leads upward and that all functions must be lifted with 
him ? And as the more primitive forms of labor come 
from the primitive mind in primitive conditions, so 
does the preservation of those forms tend to preserve 
the order of mind that produced them. 

All labor began simply in individual hands ; and all 
labor progresses by division. The division of labor 
and its pursuance by the specialist lifts it into place in 
the social organism. 

Too high specialization is a danger which we need 
not at present discuss, as it never has come within a 
thousand miles of household industries. Our danger 
is the other way. Those forms of labor which still 
remain with us, remain in a condition of arrested 
development and suppressed specialization, which is 
alike injurious to the individual and to society. Div- 
ision of labor is twofold : it consists not only in the 
number of individuals engaged in it, but also in the 
minor parts into which the labor itself is divided. The 
only degree in which this can be practised in domestic 
industries is where the united energies of the entire 
family are occupied in the same task, as in harvesting, 
or where each is allotted a part of the same task, as in 
the combined effort to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. 

Another and equally important factor in the develop- 
ment of industry is rigorously limited in the house- 
hold ; that which elevates a work in proportion to the 
number it is done for. Indeed, we might formulate 
as follows : Human industry is developed in proportion 



Household Industries. 137 

to the number it is done by and the number it is done 
for. 

Take, for instance, the effort of self-defence — " Na- 
ture's first law." It is natural, necessary, and so 
noble, if you like ; but low in the evolutionary and 
the moral sense. The defence of one's family at loss 
to oneself, is a higher and more valuable form of the 
same feeling ; and the defence of our country, even at 
a loss to our families, is higher and more valuable 
still. The greater includes the less. The whole is 
more important than the part. 

The only grading to be used in regard to labor is 
the evolutionary one. Labor is low or high in pro- 
portion to its degree of development, and that is to be 
measured by our formula of value in proportion to the 
number of people it is done by and the number of 
people it is done for. 

There is no break in the line of industrial evolution 
from the savage spearing a salmon to the United States 
Fisheries Commission ; but it is a higher grade of 
labor to work for the national fisheries than to go a- 
fishing for one's own individual pleasure or profit. 

Evolution has but one rank : that of progress ; and 
progress is from within outward and from below up- 
ward ; from the simple to the complex, from the indi- 
vidual to the general, from the private to the public. 

Our aversion to what we call ' ■ selfishness " is an 
instinctive recognition of the low grade of mere 
private interest. 

The evolution of industry is the evolution of 
humanity. The grade of labor is its station on the 
line of evolution ; and any form or degree of labor 
which belongs to a lower period of human evolution 
is de-grading. 



1 3 8 Household Economics. 

Again, our instinct is truer than our supposed moral- 
ity ; we are right in saying " I won't demean myself by 
such work." 

Were women once to realize the underlying ethical 
force and quality of this protest, it would be the first 
step toward combination for the performance of some 
tasks, done now imperfectly and painfully by unskilled 
and degrading labor. Trained intelligence has small 
chance or place in the scheme of the average house- 
wife, and this always recurring resolution, " I won't 
demean myself by such work," is regarded as purest 
insubordination and unjustifiable discontent. 

For the individual protestor, there is no doubt that 
this is often true. For the mass it is the voice of half 
stifled evolution, which yet in spite of us goes its ap- 
pointed way, and, with or without our consent, in due 
time will reach its goal. 

Here, we are forced to consider the peculiar distinc- 
tion of sex in industry, which, so far, is mainly one of 
degree rather than of kind. All industries, as we have 
seen, began with woman ; and those which have staj^ed 
with her have stayed where they began. She does all 
kinds of work, but she does it in the first degree. 
Only recently has woman entered upon the road of in- 
dustrial evolution, in teaching, for instance, — one of 
the mother functions, — differentiating, specializing, ad- 
vancing to its true place in modern civilization. But 
household industries remain perforce in the first degree. 
The structure of the house has increased in complexity 
on natural lines, because its making has fallen into the 
hands of man and become highly specialized to match 
our lives ; but the functions of the house have not so 
increased in specialization. The house itself and all 
its contents is now made by the many for the many ; 



Hottsehold Industries. 139 

but the industries of the household are still practiced 
by the few for the few. And the distinction is drawn 
sharply on sex lines. 

The sociologist might follow here a delightfully in- 
teresting line of research, — bringing ethnology, an- 
thropology, physiology, biology, and psychology to his 
aid ; but we will merely indicate the facts without 
wandering too far afield after cause and effect. What 
we wish to consider is the degree of development of 
household industry ; — its effects on the home and 
through it on the world ; on woman and through her 
on the race. 

The industries of the household are still practised by 
members of the household in so large a proportion of 
our homes as to make it the general condition ; and 
otherwise they are practised by persons hired to take 
the place of members of the family, — a phase of the 
subject to be considered in the lecture on service. Here 
it is sufficient to premise that labor done by proxy is 
not labor advanced. To hire a man to go a-fishing for 
you while you loaf, is not a step nearer the United 
States Fisheries Commission. The only division of 
labor in the household is our partial attempt to separate 
its component industries, — as when we distinguish be- 
tween cook and laundress, and even, in wealthy fam- 
ilies, admit of assistants in their several tasks. This, 
however, is no further along than when the castellan 
had among his retainers armorer and armorer's assist- 
ant, chaplain and herald and praiseful bard, — it is one 
step beyond Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, and 
that is all. 

In the enormous majority of cases, however, our 
women "do their own work," while those in next 
largest proportion hire a ' ' maid of all work " to do it 



140 Household Economics. 

for them. The work, as work, remains at the stage of 
development which can permit of such compound per- 
formance. Again, the popular sense speaks true : 
"Jack of all trades and master of none." The house- 
hold laborer is necessarily that. 

Study for a moment the inevitableness of it. Here 
is a cluster of allied industries practised in the house- 
hold : cooking, washing, repairing, nursing, teaching, 
sewing. Bach of these is a great social function capa- 
ble of high evolution. As soon as any one of them 
grows to a degree which requires more time, strength, 
and attention than another, that other must suffer. 
They are all constantly tending upward and outward, 
like the rest of living things, yet the sum of their prog- 
ress must be measured by the sum of the multiple 
operator's power, and their relative progress measured 
by the varying demands of the family. 

Thus, in some families more sewing is required, in 
others more cooking, in others more nursing ; and these 
demands vary in the same family as the years pass. 

Therefore, the development and specialization of the 
human brain, which keeps exact pace with the prog- 
ress of these external forms of human life, is checked 
and limited on every side ; and kept in a swaying, 
negative condition, which allows life in the worker and 
performance, of a sort, in the work, — but no further 
progress in either. ' ' Jack of all trades ' ' must be ' ' mas- 
ter of none ' ' ; and his trades remain in abeyance as 
does his mastership. 

Think for a moment of the effect of this condition on 
our racial growth, — remembering that it is not distrib- 
uted indifferently among the people, but confined almost 
absolutely to that half the world which, through moth- 
erhood, modifies all the world. This continuous half, 



Household Industries. , 141 

with its unceasing and unbounded effect on all, is kept 
in a condition of arrested development and suppressed 
specialization industrially, which means a similar con- 
dition mentally. It is an amorphous, low grade indus- 
trial state in half of us, carried on at the same time with 
a sharply defined, high grade industrial state in the 
the other half. The effect on the individual human or- 
ganism is to retard mental development and action, 
and on the social organism to retard industrial devel- 
opment and action. 

At each step in statements of this order, we face that 
blank wall between women and true progress erected 
chiefly by their own hands and bearing at intervals 
such mottoes as ' ' Blessed be Drudgery ' ' ; and all the 
long list of kindred sentiments, ingrained by repetition 
and custom in the very fibre of women. Because a thing 
is hard we are instantly inclined to think its doing an 
added virtue and to secretly plume ourselves on 
another specimen of feminine self-sacrifice. In fact we 
should blush for shame that in the process of the suns, 
we have learned so little, and that the shiftlessness of 
public housekeeping at the hands of our men is merely 
the reflection of our own unthinking, unreasoning 
methods in life and work. And if you think this mere 
denunciation on my part, turn to Mr. Ward's Dynamic 
Sociology and, in his section on Woman, learn what 
she has done and failed to do as the sober scientist 
sees it. 

As to the effect of these methods I shall quote here 
some lines by a woman whose powers of sarcasm are 
only equalled by her superb good sense, her insight and 
sympathy, — Charlotte Perkins Stetson, — reminding 
first those of you who may never have thought of doing 
such sum, that, to prepare the simplest meal for a family, 



142 Household Economics. 

means not less than two hours of work, this being from 
its inception to the final clearing away and cleaning. 

"Six hours a day the woman spends on food ! 
Six mortal hours a day. 

With fire and water toiling, heat and cold — 
Struggling with laws she does not understand 
Of chemistry and physics, and the weight 
Of poverty and ignorance besides. 
Toiling for those she loves, the added strain 
Of tense emotion on her humble skill. 
The sensitiveness born of love and fear 
Making it harder to do even work. 
Toiling without release, no hope ahead 
Of taking up another business soon, 
Of varying the task she finds too hard ; — 
This her career, so closely interknit 
With holier demands as deep as life, 
That to refuse to cook is held the same 
As to refuse her wife and motherhood. 
Six mortal hours a day to handle food — 
Prepare it, serve it, clean it all away. — 
With allied labors of the stove and tub, 
The pan and dishcloth, and the scrubbing brush. 
Developing forever in her brain 
The power to do the work in which she lives. 
While the slow finger of Heredity, 
Writes on the forehead of each living man, 
Strive as he may, ' His mother was a cook ! ' " 



These are the facts. That each ta.sk may be done 
with happiness, with satisfaction that those we love are 
served, alters no whit of the indictment. There is a 
better way and we must learn it. 

At this point, let me tell you once more that I am 
not the expounder of any theory, but the mere fact- 
grubber, giving you in order facts as I find them, and 



Household Industries. 143 

allowing them finally to speak for themselves, as facts 
have a way of doing. And before their voice is heard 
in any summary of their real meaning, we will once 
more refresh ourselves with remembrance of what we 
all know 7 : that there have been many minds among our 
American women amply able to cope with and conquer 
difficulties. That life for them was far less complex in 
its demands than it is for us, is in part offset by the fact 
that they were compelled to handle many industries 
now dismissed from the household. But over and over 
again we read, or we know by personal knowledge, of 
women studying Greek as they rocked the cradle, or 
hearing the lessons of boys preparing for college, or 
coaching the divinity student, a little rusty in his 
classics. 

lyUcy L,arcom's A New E?igland Girlhood and 
Mrs. Susan Leslie's Recollections of my Mother 
give in detail the passion for study and the sacrifices 
made to secure it ; and that wonderful mastery of 
detail summed up in the New England phrase " A 
woman of faculty," is part of the story of our grand- 
mothers, and no less part of our own advance as a 
people. Honor forever to those homes, and the 
mothers in those homes, who gave us daj 7 by day 
evidence of what power lies in human will and human 
love. And then let us remember that in this incessant 
and tremendous strain upon every power was consumed 
a portion of our own birthright, and that the overwork of 
our grandmothers has robbed us of our full and proper 
portion of nervous vitality. 

And let me add that word of Nathaniel Haw- 
thorne's, "God be thanked that gave us such ances- 
tors, and God be thanked each generation removes us 
farther from them ! ' ' 



144 Household Economics. 

Of all the myriad things their hands did, and did 
well for the most part, but two remain to us un- 
changed in their daily recurring demands : cooking 
and cleaning. Have they improved in their methods ? 
In the advance which marks every form of industry, — 
the specialization of each of their phases — the perfect- 
ing and simplifying of processes — have either cooking 
or cleaning kept pace with those others ? As one who 
has lived in every part of the United States, and who 
in these later years has studied deeply the conditions 
among the poor, and especially among women wage- 
earners, the only answer I can make is No. As a 
whole, in spite of our splendid food supply, we are one 
of the worst fed nations in the civilized world. And I 
beg that I may not be instantly understood and reported 
as claiming that we have no good American cookery. 
We have delicious and distinctive American dishes, but 
in the one matter of bread alone, how often do we find, 
as we travel, a perfect product ? 

You, of course, my neighbor, make an irreproach- 
able loaf, always even in quality and good for food ; 
but have I not heard you express your opinion of 
Mrs. Jones' loaves and her sad ups and downs in 
results ? Have I not heard your own wail that you 
have no luck in this or that combination ? lyiick ! 
Does the chemist talk of luck or no luck in his ex- 
periments ? Cooking is a chemical process, and its 
conditions should be as carefully watched as is all that 
goes to make the perfection of a chemical process. In 
East and West, North and South, trained intelligence 
in cooking is the exception, and depths of imbecility 
the rule. I have seen the mechanic or workman's wife 
put her lump of beef in a cold pan with some cold 
grease, and set both on the top of a red hot stove to 



Household Industries. 145 

scorch peacefully the appointed time, until, as she 
dumped it on the platter, no man could tell if it were 
fried beef or fried boot-heel. Saleratus biscuit and 
bacon are the staple diet three times a day for thou- 
sands upon thousands in our country, and, especially in 
the cities, we have synchronous anachronism side by 
side — the princely house of a Vanderbilt perfect in 
every minutest detail, — a chef presiding in the kitchen 
and composing his menus to the sound of music, with 
a corps of assistants waiting his orders, and in the 
same street far down toward the river, and the factory 
region, the method I have mentioned, — the meal 
warranted not to feed and leaving the eater with what 
he calls a ' ' goneness, ' ' the remedy for which he seeks 
in the saloon. Tea boiled in a tin tea pot and rank 
with the tannic acid thus produced ; bread white with 
alum — these are the staples for the laboring men and 
women of our cities. Nor does the country fare much 
better. It is time that we call a halt and ask if these 
industries must remain forever hampered by the un- 
reasoning methods of the past, and if there be not some 
practical method of lifting them, no matter how slowly, 
from the dead level on which they still abide. The 
stir of thought and feeling is evident at every point 
where intelligent thinking goes on, and the formation 
of the National Household Economic Association at 
Chicago in 1893, with its numerous branches since 
organized, indicates that there has been begun at least 
a welcome new departure. Many phases of cooking 
are already being removed from the house, pickling 
and preserving, for instance, being largely done out- 
side, and many women making a specialty of delicate 
and careful work in one or the other. 
As to cleaning, compare the scientific antiseptic 



1 46 Household Econojntcs. 

methods of the modern hospital with our still primitive 
processes in the home. The soul-wearing spotlessness 
of the New England housekeeper — that one, for in- 
stance, who when she asked company to tea, imme- 
diately scrubbed the cellar stairs— has its offset in the 
frowsy shiftlessness of the poor white in the South, or 
in the workman's home of the North, or even in this 
same model New England housekeeper's utter igno- 
rance of the real sanitary laws of the house as an 
organism. 

In short, the time for better methods is ripe. The 
sense of helplessness and distraction that, in spite of us, 
invades our homes, means simply that we are to be 
forced to think, and that out of this transition time is 
to come all the good toward which we have blindly 
blundered ; but which is our certain portion, — and to 
come through our own concerted, conscious action, — 
no more blind and stumbling, but a steady march 
forward ; no more distracted and oppressed, but con- 
fident and strong, and singing as we go: 

" I feel the earth move sunward ; 
I join the great march onward, 
And take with joy while living 
My freehold of thanksgiving. " 

REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

Dynamic Sociology, by Lester F. Ward, pp. 552-61 and 656- 

67. 
The Evolution of Marriage, by Charles Letourneau. 
The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thompson. 
Prehistoric Man, by Daniel Wilson. 
Origin of Civilization, by Sir John Lubbock. 
Buckleys History of Civilization. 
The Place of Woman in Primitive Culture, by O. E). Mason. 



Household Industries. 147 

Woman, Church and State, by Matilda Joslyn Gage. p. 456. 

Women Wage Earners, by Helen Campbell, Chap, xii. 

Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis. 

Primitive Culture, by Edward Tylor. 

Das Weib, by Dr. Herman Ploss. 

1 'Household Economics as a University Movement", by Helen 

Campbell. Am. Kitchen Magazine, Nov., 1894. 
"Household Economics as a University Movement," by Helen 

Campbell. The Review of Reviews, March, 1896. 
The Relation of College Women to Progress in Domestic 

Science. By Ellen H. Richards. A Paper presented to the 

Association of Collegiate Alumnae, Oct. 24, 1890. 




CHAPTER VIII. 
THE NUTRITION OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 

Nutritive Function of the Household in Relation to the Indi- 
vidual ; in Relation to Society — Processes of Nutrition in 
Organ ; Organism and Organization — Importance of Nutri- 
tion to Life and of its Secondary Processes to Development 
— The Struggle for Existence — Man's Victor}- — No Longer 
a Struggle but a Growth — Household Nutrition Merely a 
Stage in the Process — The Kitchen, the Stomach of the 
House — Primitive Nutrition Simple and Private — Increase 
of Complexity and Co-ordination — From Bone to Banquet 
— Physiological Needs — Waste and Supply — Age and Oc- 
cupation — Racial Dietetics — Theories and Facts — Some of 
Our Errors — Control of Nutrition and its Consequences. 

B have found that most of the industries that 
began as household functions have in the 
natural course of their evolution and de- 
velopment grown out from the house into larger place in 
the world than the house afforded. Of the functions 
that remain in the household the leading two are nutri- 
tion and excretion, — the feeding and cleaning processes 
of humanity. Nutrition is, at present, of the larger 
importance. More time and space are allotted to it ; 
more energy spent in its fulfilment ; more consideration 
devoted to it. The cooking school has come. The 
cleaning school is still to come. 

In studying this great function of humanity's nutri- 

148 




The Nutrition of the Household. 149 

tion, as in our study of the elaborate structure of the 
home and its furniture, we are led again to see the in- 
timate and unbroken connection between the soul of 
man and his body, the body of man and his house, the 
house of man and the earth it comes from. In touching 
upon the subject of nutrition, we touch upon the process 
of living — neither more nor less. Nutrition, if I may 
stretch the word for a moment to cover excretion as 
well, — and indeed the latter is but a sub-process, a 
consequence of the former — nutrition in its largest sense 
is that stream of materials in motion, in which we live. 
Our apparently solid bodies are but processions of 
materials. While the procession passes a given point 
we live in it — that is all. While the necessary constit- 
uents of our bodies appear in due season, order, and 
proportion, we live ; if they fail to appear, we die. 
Like a spot of sunlight on a river is the apparent fixed- 
ness of our life. Do not imagine that we are permanent 
objects, through which dinners may or may not pass. 
The dinners are the fixed consideration and we the 
transient one. It is a matter of indifference to the 
dinner who eats it, or if it is eaten at all, — a matter of 
terrible importance to us. 

There are in the world certain elements. When 
some of them are combined in a certain proportion, lo ! 
there is standing ground for Life, and L,ife stands 
thereon proudly. But his elevation is like that of a 
clown on a rolling barrel ; — if he does not keep it going, 
down he comes ! 

See with what literal exactness the body of a man is 
like " a body of men." Some men organized and act- 
uated by a common purpose, form a body and can act 
as such, while they so remain together. Some bread 
and cheese, meat and vegetables and fruit, organized 



150 Household Economics. 

and actuated by a common purpose, form a body and 
can act as such while they so remain together. The 
soul lives in the body of the individual as the "com- 
mon purpose ' ' lives in the body of men. 

As we value our corporate existence, we must pre- 
serve its constituents, else we discorporate speedily. 
It is a " low " function, this of nutrition, but one of 
considerable importance. Until it is duly performed, 
no other business of any consequence can be attended 
to. And as the health and virtue of each individual 
member of our body depends on its being properly nour- 
ished, so does our health and virtue depend on our 
being properly nourished. And as we, though having 
enough to eat, are not healthy unless all our members 
are properly nourished, so society, though rich as a 
whole, is not healthy unless all of its members are 
properly nourished. 

There is no break in our social economy from stom- 
ach to kitchen and from kitchen to market. The pro- 
cess is all one in constantly enlarging degree. We are 
considering that stage of the process of nutrition which 
is at present covered by household economics. I^ook 
first at the close connection between the kitchen and 
the stomach. "There is many a slip 'twixt the cup 
and the lip," says the proverb ; but there should be 
none. Nutrition covers every step of the way from 
phosphates and carbons and nitrogens in the earth's 
substance to the springy muscles and clear brain which 
form our immediate engine. 

Between them and us comes first the nutrition of the 
vegetable. We can only eat what has already once 
been eaten — or twice, when it comes to meat. Then 
the manifold processes of laying hold on our meat and 
vegetables, — all these are steps in nutrition. The old 



The Nutrition of the Household. 151 

recipe which begins, ' ' First catch your hare, ' ' began 
reasonably enough. All that goes to secure and pre- 
serve our supplies is part of the process. Then we who 
are human have instituted another nutritive process, 
more complex than any known to the animals below 
us — the preparation of food. This and its attendant 
machinery is la cuisine — the kitchen. After the cup 
has reached the lip, we can do no better than the ani- 
mals (for that matter, we cannot always do as well). 
But to the whole nutritive process before the lip is 
reached we can apply intelligence and promote develop- 
ment. 

The value of our advanced system of nutrition to the 
individual is that by having the welcome dinner bell 
summon him to perfectly prepared nutrition, he is 
thereby enabled to use all his highly trained capacity in 
some higher business than that of getting his own 
dinner. 

When the little cells were all stomachs, there was 
no organism. When the stomach tcok its place in the 
organism, numbers of cells, sure of their dinner, could 
contentedly specialize into bones and brains and other 
useful articles ; all of which helped to get dinner for 
the stomach. Society, setting apart the service of some 
to obtain and prepare nutrition for all, effects a similar 
advance on a large scale. But for the dinner-table and 
its intelligent provision, we should still all be engaged 
in the business of getting our own dinners, — an occu- 
pation both absorbing and degrading (as getting or 
helping to get the dinners of the community is not). 

The subtlety and perfection of our nutritive processes 
require the special service of a specialized functionary ; 
hence thk cook, as essential to social progress as 
The Carpenter, The Weaver, or The Smith, 



152 Household Economics. 

Cooked food, served food, — saves energy to the body'; 
raw material, like grass, requires a most elaborate di- 
gestive system to make it into meat. It takes less 
machinery to digest the meat, and even less is needed 
if we make the meat into soup. Note here a relation 
between food and organism ; where food is simple, 
plenty, and easy to get, the development of the organism 
is all inside ; — an elaborate digestive system, a clumsy 
and simple muscular system. 

Where food is various, scarce, and hard to get, the 
development is the other way ; — an elaborate external 
organism to get food with, and a simpler one to digest 
it. 

It is in this connection that the importance of nutri- 
tion to life shows clearly. On the primary processes 
of nutrition all development of life is conditioned. 
Mere digestion is the only function of the primordial 
cell. He can take care of the food if it comes his way, 
that is all. A simple organ was he, with one function. 
The union of these cells in the second degree of life, — 
organism, — is commensurate with the development of 
the secondary processes of nutrition, — the various 
methods of obtaining food. In all the infinite differen- 
tiation of organic forms, the secondary nutritive char- 
acteristics are the principal distinctions. Reproductive 
processes modify the creature somewhat ; defensive 
processes somewhat also ; but the secondaty nutritive 
processes most of all. And the reason is plain. Re- 
production and defence are only occasional demands ; 
nutrition is constant. Creatures mate and fight occa- 
sionally. They eat continually. 

The acts which the organism has to perform to get 
its food are the main factors in its development. As 
the food supply varies the animals vary, so that a nat- 



The Nutrition of the Household* 153 

tiralist could tell us exactly what kind of creatures 
lived in a place if he knew what the food suppfy was. 

Let me mention, merely as a few indicative instances, 
cattle, modified by abundant supplies of one kind of 
food found on vast plains ; sheep, modified by the kind 
of ground their grass grows on ; and, for an extreme 
case of specialization, that Javanese monkey with the 
one attenuated claw-like finger, — a finger developed 
by his constant search for a fine fat grub of that island, 
which grub bores holes in trees. 

This may be followed as extensively as we like. I 
wish now merely to indicate the importance of second- 
ary nutritive processes in evolution. Animal life, we 
see, is in its first stage a helpless dependent on the food 
supply ; and in the second an active pursuer of the food 
supply, but still the mere sport and plaything of that 
mighty but capricious stream. Should the food sup- 
ply of a region change, the animal of that region must 
change too, modifying and remodifying his poor organ- 
ism in a perpetual effort to keep up with his dinner. 

But this is not the end of the story. There exists a 
third degree of life — a tertiary process of nutrition. 
The cells, mere organs, united to form organisms. 
The organisms united also in organization, when the 
fulness of time is come, — and we have humanity. 

Humanity, in its least existence, represents organiza- 
tion, however low ; and with that organization has 
developed the third process in nutrition — the production 
of food. Man can digest food, — so can an amoeba. 
He can pluck it off a tree, — so can the ape. He can 
catch it and kill it, — so can the tiger. He can produce 
food from year to year, regularly, sufficiently, of what 
sort and variety and proportion he chooses. So can 
hardly another living thing. Bees and ants, squirrels and 



154 Household Economics, 

field mice being almost the only inhabitants of the 
animal world owning storehouses of food. Man does 
this not by virtue of being vertebrate or biped, but by 
virtue of living in organic relation, — being part of 
the social organism. 

Agriculture and commerce (its child) depend abso- 
lutely on our social interrelation. They are never found 
without it. These are familiar facts, I know, but study a 
little more deeply into their relation. Facts have always 
been with us ; — to perceive their relation is the work of 
the scientist. I^ook at what these three steps mean. 
Here is the food supply;— a number of constituents 
tumbling calmly about with climatic and geographic 
and geologic changes. Here is the cell waiting for it 
to come along. If it does come he can eat. If it does 
not come he cannot eat, and therefore dies. Now be- 
hold the organism. He does not have to wait for food 
to come his way — he is up and after it ; up trees, un- 
der water, into the ground, and spending his energy, as 
fast as he gets any, in speed to run with, traps to catch 
with, bait to lure with, weapons to kill with ; a cease- 
less and frantic effort to catch up with his food supply. 
He never could go any further, for it took all his food to 
get his strength and all his strength to get his food. 
All this is ' ' the struggle for existence. ' ' 

Now comes man. He does not have to wait for 
food, nor to run after food. He can make food grow. 
He has caught up with his food supply. He has con- 
quered in the struggle for existence. Hereafter, his 
progress is no longer a struggle, but a growth. This 
does not mean that he need not labor. The amoeba 
did not labor — he loafed. The existence of the amoeba 
is an inferior existence. Labor is a human function ; 
a social function, — and as such took its rise in the 



The Nutrition of the Household. 155 

tertiary process of nutrition — the effort required to 
produce food. But look at the difference between the 
exertion of a man to procure food and the exertion of a 
beast to procure it. The lower creature can in no way 
modify or control his food ; he must, on the contrary, 
be modified and controlled by it. The shape of his 
body, the quality of his brain, the activity of both, are 
conditioned upon so much grass or fruit or fleeing 
prey. His food makes him, and there he is — a product, 
not a producer. Man is equally modified by his food 
and the exertion required to get it, but he can choose 
that food and dictate that exertion. He can make the 
food that makes him; he can modify himself ! Hence 
all that lies in our word Progress. 

All the varied activities of man, which have made 
him what he is, are primarily traceable to his effort to 
make a living ; and that is literally what man does. 
He makes his living. In our courses in History, Eco- 
nomics, and Bthics, we have learned, or think we have, 
the kind of living he has made. 

Man now, as a race, eats food universally produced, 
distributed, prepared ; in his ever growing third proc- 
ess of nutrition he has learned to govern and adjust 
the food supply so that, while our means of production, 
transportation, and distribution endure, man cannot die 
from off the earth until all of him dies ; and he lives 
strong in the powers and faculties which his self- 
governed food supply produces. 

In this immense range of the human nutritive 
process, which takes from innumerable world- divided 
places the many varying constituents of human food, 
carries them anywhere on the earth's surface, and 
serves them on a million plates for a million mouths to 
eat, — processes which involve the co-ordinate activities 



156 Household Economics. 

of a million people, — our field of study, household nu- 
trition, is but a simple stage. None the less is it a 
vitally important one. For the world in general, food 
is prepared and eaten at home ; and no matter how 
many farmers and butchers and sailors and teamsters 
and grocers have conspired to provide us with good 
food, the one cook in our kitchen may vitiate the prod- 
uct in an hour. 

Between the wide world and our mouths is a long 
way ; and the kitchen is much closer to our mouths 
than the world is. As our mouths perform a certain 
part of the digestive process, preparing the food for 
the stomach, so does the kitchen prepare it for our 
mouths. And in no part of all the long journey is 
there room for more knowledge or more skill, and at 
present less evidence of either knowledge or skill ! 

A clam is a simpler organism than we are ; but be- 
cause our teeth ache we do not wish to be a clam. 
High organization is complex, not simple ; but it may 
work with perfect ease and smoothness none the less. 
And so will our household organization work when we 
understand it. 

The early savage with his solitary bone lived more 
simply than we live ; but our banquet, with all its 
abuses, is part of a higher living. We must learn to 
separate abuses from their sustaining causes and dis- 
criminate between them. 

While the kitchen is the stomach of the house, it is 
as essential to have it rightly understood and managed 
as it is essential to have the stomach so cared for. 
Cooking is preliminary digestion. Primitive household 
nutrition was like all other primitive processes, simple 
and individual. It has grown complex and social, as 
we have — not only as a pleasing coincidence, but as an 



The Nutrition of the Household. 157 

essential cause and consequence. The popular cry for 
simpler living is a mistake — in so far as it is a cry for 
cruder living. We cannot go backward. But what 
we do need in our living is a smoother specialization. 
Here then we face a series of physiological needs 
summed up in the word food. I spare you, as indeed I 
must, any attempt to give you here the composition of 
the human body with all that its complex structure de- 
mands. The full grown adult takes in each day through 
mouth and lungs about eight and a half pounds of 
dry food and the air necessary for breathing purposes. 
Through every pore of the skin, the lungs, the kid- 
neys, the lower intestines, there is a corresponding 
waste ; and supply and waste together in the course 
of a year amount to about 3,000 pounds, or one and a 
half tons ! Now, the food taken into the human body 
is made up, as the pages of your larger Physiology and 
Anatomy will tell you, of sixteen different elements. 
Oxygen is the only one of these that is mainly used 
in its natural state. Water, which makes considerably 
over two thirds of the body, enters largely into the 
composition of food, from the drinks through the whole 
gamut of fruits, of succulent vegetables, eggs, fish, 
cheese, the cereals, and even the fats. The demand 
for food includes fat, sugar, starch, nitrogenous foods, 
found chiefly in flesh, but also in a few important 
vegetables, — and last, the salts, which belong alike to 
vegetable and animal food, — meat, fish, and potatoes 
containing phosphorus, lime, and magnesia. Potash 
is given us in meat, fish, milk, vegetables, and fruits. 
Iron abounds in flesh and vegetables, and sulphur 
enters into albumen, casein, and fibrine. 

The simplest division of food is into flesh formers and 
heat producers ; the former being as often called nitro- 



158 Household Economics. 

genous food, proteids or albumenoids, the latter heat- 
giving or carbonaceous foods. For a healthy body- 
both are essential ; but climate and constitution will 
always affect the amounts of each required. In a keen 
and long continued winter, the most condensed forms 
of carbonaceous food will be needed. In a summer, a 
small portion of nitrogenous food will nourish muscle, 
and a large amount of fruit and vegetables are indicated. 

Muscle being the first consideration in building up a 
healthy body, the food provider to this end must at 
once study the values of different foods. Save for the 
little manual it was my pleasant task to make in 1879, 
we have, outside of text-books on physiology and cook- 
books pure and simple, nothing until very recently 
that met the need of the food provider for plain state- 
ment of what was wanted. In 1885, the American 
Public Health Association received from Mr. Henry 
Loomb, of Rochester, the offer of a prize for the best 
monograph on "Practical, Sanitary, and Economical 
Cooking." Of the seventy essays that in time came 
in, but one fully met the requirements, and remains the 
best short treatise on this subject, under the same title 
as that of the offer, Practical^ Sanitary, and Economical 
Cooking. 

To this admirable work has been added that of Mrs. 
Ellen H. Richards, of the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, who has made and overseen the making 
of a series of dietaries for all ages and various condi- 
tions of men. 

All this knowledge, brought within the compass of 
ample charts, will be part of any future work to be 
done in a course of Household Economics. Age and 
occupation natural^ determine the application of each 
dietary, but from the baby well or sick, on through 



The Nutrition of the Household. 159 

every phase of life, these charts will give you with 
unerring accuracy food values, just so far as our present 
best knowledge determines them. Science does not 
pretend — indeed knows better than — to meddle with 
racial instincts. A study of national dishes is, in this 
light, a very fascinating one. The lamp of life for 
Greenland has to have a very literal supply, and the 
Esquimaux with his lump of raw blubber consumes 
the only food that renders his continued existence in 
his latitude possible. 

For the other extreme of temperature, the Bast 
Indies, China, Africa, and part of the West Indies, we 
find rice the universal food. Starch and sugar serve 
as flesh formers, the starch of the rice turning to sugar 
under the action of the saliva, — with the addition of a 
little ghee, or melted butter, or olive oil used by the 
West Indians, — these giving all the essential elements. 
In a latitude a trifle more northern, the same rice is 
mingled with bits of fish or meat, as in the Turkish 
pilau, to which mutton or poultry is added. The Arab 
has also an occasional pilau of mutton, but subsists 
chiefly on a handful of dates and parched wheat or 
maize for his meal, with a draught of mare's or 
camel's milk. The Turkish burden bearer adds to the 
same regimen cucumbers eaten as we eat apples, picks 
up his 200-pound bag of coffee as one picks up a 
pebble, and, like the Arab, he is a model of muscular 
power, endurance, and agility. 

Turning to Southern Europe, macaroni replaces 
rice, and is the most condensed form in which wheat 
can appear ; olive oil and cheese, as well as tomatoes, 
adding the necessary elements. Spain has the olla po- 
drida, a dish which has as chief ingredient the garbanzo 
or field pea. It is a rich stew of fowls and bacon, red 



1 60 Household Economics. 

peppers, and pease. Red pepper enters into the compo- 
sition of most dishes in tropical countries, and there is 
good reason for it. I<ong continued intense heat 
weakens the action of the liver and lessens the supply 
of bile. Red pepper has the quality, which black or 
white pepper has not, of stimulating the liver and so 
aiding digestion. Here is the reason then of the curry 
and the ol/a, nature having provided in capsicum just 
that fillip for the liver which serves its turn at times in 
•more northern climates. 

In France, the pot an feu, or soup pot, simmers in 
every peasant and middle class home, and is not despised 
in richer ones. In this a little beef is cooked so judi- 
ciously as to flavor a large mass of vegetables and broth, 
and this, served with salad and oil and bread, forms a 
meal making the utmost of every constituent offered. 

Norway, Sweden, and Russia naturally tend more 
and more to the oily diet of the Esquimaux. In short, 
national dietaries from that of the ancient Jews down, 
give, as we read them, a new understanding of the 
part food plays in supplementing climatic deficiencies 
and forming national character. 

What our individual constitution needs we may all 
learn in time. The laborer requires one form, the 
growing child another, the man or woman whose labor 
is chiefly intellectual a third form. The excess or the 
lack of any necessary element means disease, and for 
such condition we are already responsible. 

Weak and vitiated blood may be an inheritance, but 
scientific feeding has fully demonstrated its power to 
avert or alter effects. Scrofula and all weaknesses and 
unwholesomenesses change face under the rational 
methods of scientific treatment, — and the best physi- 
cians now rely largely on natural methods for cure. 



The Nutrition of the Household. 1 6 1 

It is a most unfortunate baby whose mother knows 
nothing of the laws of food. I have seen a three 
months baby swallowing its portion of coffee or tea, 
and the small German at six months taking its little 
mug of lager beer as philosophically as its serious- faced 
father. Fevers and rashes are the first result ; nerves 
and a shocking temper the second, — and the round- 
e}^ed mother wonders where the child got its dreadful 
disposition. The physician who keeps pace with mod- 
ern dietetics strikes out meat altogether until the child 
is at least seven years old ; and advises its use only 
once a day after that. Sir Henry Thompson, one of 
the most distinguished of English physicians, and 
noted as well for his popularity as a diner out and giver 
of dinners, writes strenuously in his book on Food and 
Feedi?ig against the prevailing excessive use of meat, 
especially for children. 

Nitrogenous vegetables and fruit advantageously take 
the place of meat for all. Mathieu-Williams, in his 
Chemistry of Cookery, takes the same ground as does 
Sir Henry Thompson, believing, as do many thought- 
ful physicians on either side of the Atlantic, that as 
we advance in civilization the use of meat will lessen 
more and more. 

So widely is this belief spreading in England that 
I/Oiidon has now over a dozen well kept vegetarian 
restaurants. In one of these which I have frequented, 
may be seen swarms of students and clerks from White- 
hall (the War Office) and the offices of the London 
County Council. Vegetarianism is generally under- 
stood to exclude all mineral products, but this is an 
error. Milk, eggs, butter, and cheese are all used freely 
in these restaurants, and fruit in profusion. 

Probably the best and most scientific presentation of 



1 6 2 Household Econom ics. 

the claims of vegetarianism is that contained in a little 
book by Dr. Anna Kingsford. The Perfect Way in 
Diet. It is the expansion of a thesis prepared for her 
graduation from the Ecole de Medicine, of Paris, and 
which was so brilliant a piece of work that on its publi- 
cation it was crowned by the French Academy, the 
highest distinction that a book can receive in France. 
We have not time now to consider its argument, be- 
yond pointing out that whoever has once watched the 
unloading of a stock car, and seen the wretched ani- 
mals parched with thirst and quivering from the con- 
finement of the long journey and from fear as they are 
driven to the slaughter houses, such a one will realize 
that the flesh through which such fevered blood has 
coursed is hardly wholesome food for man. And if we 
still demand it three times or even once a day, it is at 
least worth while to know whatever scientific reasons 
exist against it, and to meditate on their significance. 

For this country, vegetarianism took on its most 
radical and least desirable form,— the Grahamites re- 
nouncing most things but bran bread and dried apples. 
I have seen Grahamite pies composed of Graham flour 
and water for crust and sugarless, spiceless stewed dried 
apples for contents. Salt, butter, eggs, in short every 
relishable thing, was forbidden, and naturally, ordinary 
flesh and blood rebelled. But the new order invites 
rather than repels, and the student especially finds that 
working power increases and that the brain is clearer 
for a vegetarian diet, — two good reasons for experi- 
menting with it at least. 

The old belief of dieticians, " Without phosphorus 
no thinking," has passed away, minute experiment 
having demonstrated that the amount of phosphorus 
passing through the system bears no relation to the in- 



The Ntitrition of the Household. 163 

tensity or extensiveness of thought. ' ' A captive lion, ' ' 
writes Dr. Chambers, one of the most distinguished of 
English authorities on diet ; ' ' a leopard or hare which 
can have wonderfully little to think about, assimilates 
and parts with a greater quantity of phosphorus than 
a professor of chemistry working hard in his labora- 
tory ; while a beaver, who always seems to be contriv- 
ing something, excretes so little phosphorus that 
chemical analysis cannot detect it." 

Fish, eggs, and oysters have been ordered for stu- 
dents because rich in phosphorus. The real reason is 
that all are easily digested, and the student who, unless 
he goes in for athletics, leads a rather inactive life as to 
his muscles, does not need the heavy food of the la- 
borer. Frequent small supplies of good and easily di- 
gested food are what is needed for all brain workers, 
and the students' dietaries now in use in Chicago Uni- 
versity and other institutions are made on this plan. 

We are far more apt to eat too much than too little, 
and often in turn a heavy meal may be so badly planned 
as to mean by no means enough real nourishment. All 
this we shall gradually learn in detail, and in good 
time food principles will be taught as naturally and as 
widely as the multiplication table, and every child know 
understanding^ the constituents of food and what is 
needed at every stage of life. And if this seems im- 
possible, let me add that I have seen it done, the chil- 
dren taking it in as unconsciously and as permanently 
as the children of one of our famous anatomists got to 
know every bone in the body from playing with bones 
and manikins. 

It must by this time be quite evident that the build- 
ing of a beautiful human body is something in great 
degree in our own hands. Raisers of cattle and of 



164 Household Economics. 

poultry have long known that proper feeding determined 
the nature of the product. Cows are fed in one way 
for milk and in another for cream ; hens in one way for 
eggs and in quite another way for fattening for market. 
But the same man who studies every fresh fact he can 
obtain bearing on methods of feeding, and who experi- 
ments carefully on his own account in feeding his 
stock, groans with dyspepsia and pooh-poohs any study 
of human dietaries. Yet till these are studies, not in 
the fussy method of invalid or crank, but as part of the 
necessary, quietly assimilated knowledge that makes 
all genuine culture, we shall fall short of the thing we 
might have been. 

The ancient Greek had little chemical knowledge, 
but he had intuition and superb common sense. The 
yearly games were prepared for by long courses of rigor- 
ous diet, precisely as our modern athlete trains, — and 
baths and rubbings and all methods of strengthening 
were then far better and more general than ours. 

In the Elmira Reformatory many remarkable experi- 
ments in this line have been tried on young criminals, 
whose ill-fed, ill-nurtured bodies have seemed to re- 
ceive new souls and to take on forms of health and 
beauty one would have declared impossible to them. 
Mal-nutrition is at the bottom of the defects which Dr. 
Sargent notes as marking the figures of American 
college men and college women ; these defects being 
summed up in the composite statue of each shown 
at the World's Fair in Chicago. Underfed or over- 
fed, the result is in either case defective lines and 
destruction of the beauty which ought to be a national 
characteristic. 

Realize, then, before we pass on to the second part 
of our subject, — the chemical properties of foods, — 



The Nutrition of the Household. 165 

what it is that we are doing, and how absolutely what 
we are doing takes hold of the very springs of life. 
Believe it, for without belief it has no real place with 
us. L,et each one of us who would see it grow, — who 
know the body as the temple of the Holy Ghost, and 
who would have that temple fair and fine and firm in 
every line and in every innermost recess, — study these 
laws of food, and know that in studying them we build 
not only for ourselves, but also for our children and our 
children's children. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND R^FKRKNCKS. 

" Influence of Foods on Civilization," by R. A. Proctor, North 

American Review, vol. cxxxv., p. 547. 
" Science Applied to the Production and Consumption of Food, " 

by Edward Atkinson. Science, vol. vi., p. 234. 
The Easiest Way, by Helen Campbell, chaps, vii. to ix. 
The Physiology of Common Life, by George Henry Lewes. 
The Chemistry of Common Life, by James F. W. Johnston. 
The Handbook of Household Science, by Edward Youmans. 
Food a?id Feeding, by Sir Henry Thompson. 
The Philosophy of Eating, by A. J. Bellows. 
A Course of Practical Elementary Biology, by John Bidgood. 
Food, by A. H. Church. 

The Chemistry of Cookery, by W. Mathieu Williams. 
The Perfect Way in Diet, by Dr. Anna Kingsford. 
Foods, by Edward Smith. 
Food and Dietetics, by Dr. Chambers. 
Food a?id Dietetics, by Dr. Pavy. 
Food and Digestion, by Dr. Brinton. 
Food, by Dr. Letheby. 

Text-Book of Physiology, by M. Foster, M.D. 
How Plants Grow, by Asa Gray. 
The Vegetable Kingdom, by E. A. Rand. 
What to Eat and How to Eat It, by R. F. Beardsley. 
Food in Health and Disease, by B. Burney Yeo, M.D. 



i66 



Household Economics. 



Outlines for the Management of Diet, by Dr. Edward Tunis 

Bruen. 
Foods for the Fat, edited by Dr. C. W. Greene. 
Food for the Invalid, the Convalescent, the Dyspeptic and the 

Gouty, by Dr. J. Milner Fothergill. 
The Science of Nutrition, by Edward Atkinson. 
Principles of Chemical Philosophy, by Josiah Cooke. 
Inorganic Chemistry, by Dr. Remsen. 
Human Physiology, by Dandis and Sterling. 
Organic Chemistry, by Dr. Remsen. 
Physiological Chemistry of the Animal Body, by Arthur 

Gamgee. 
Chemistry of Daily Life, Lassar-Cohn. 
Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs und Genussmittel, J. 

Kcenig. 
Hoiu to Feed Children, Iyouise Hogan. 
Dietetics, by Gilman Thompson. 
The Spirit of Cookery, J. Iy. W. Thudicum. 
A Text-Book of Physiological Chemistry, Hammersten. 
Dietetic Value of Bread, John Good fellow. 
A Text-Book of Inorganic Chemistry, by Prof. Victor von 

Richter. Translated by Prof. Edgar V. Smith. P. Blakis- 

ton, Son & Co., Philadelphia. 




CHAPTER IX. 



FOOD AND ITS PREPARATION. 



Chemical Properties of Foods — Animal and Vegetable Foods ; 
Mineral Constituents — Nutritive Values — Our Food Supply 
"From the Ground Up" — Preparatory Processes, General 
and Special — Diets — Vegetarianism — The Cooking Animal 
— Cooking as an Art, a Science, a Handicraft, a Profession 
— Apparatus and Methods — Primitive ; Ancient ; Modern ; 
I^ocal — Our Advance in this Art as Compared with Others 
— Dietaries for Infancy, Childhood, Youth, Maturity, Age, 
and for the Sick — Markets and Marketing — Adulteration — 
Supervision of Foods — Civilized Living. 

WHIIvK the question of the actual chemical prop- 
erties of foods is under steady investigation, 
various German chemists especially having 
devoted their lives to it, there are certain foundation 
facts that remain practically unaltered. Chemistry 
itself progresses so swiftly that each decade wipes out 
almost absolutely the work of the previous one, and in 
the words of Josiah Cooke, the famous professor of 
chemistry at Harvard, to his students, " Except for 
historic purposes, look at no treatise written over ten 
years ago. M Fortunately for our purpose, it is names 
rather than facts that have changed. The older works 
on food and its composition may still be followed, 
though the student must always bear in mind the 
changes in terms and measurements. But for our 

167 



1 68 Household Economics. 

*■ 
purpose, we have simply to keep in mind that of the 
various elements shown by chemistry to exist in na- 
ture, only a few enter into the composition of the 
human body, the first four, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, 
and nitrogen being in far larger quantity than any of 
the others. These are followed in always diminishing 
quantity by sulphur, phosphor, chlorine, sodium, potas- 
sium, calcium, magnesium, iron, fluorine, silicon, man- 
ganese, aluminium, and copper, — this last being the 
merest trace or suggestion. 

Food, then, must contain all these elements, since in 
the act of living we perpetually destroy and must per- 
petually renew. But as simple elements, they are use- 
less ; not only must they combine, but the combination 
must be formed by the agency of a living organism, 
taking form as an organic product. These take the 
form of elementary products, and by their analysis we 
come to alimentary principles, animal and vegetable 
foods, and their mineral constituents falling into line 
and presenting five groups whose arrangement has 
given infinite thought to the chemist. We cannot di- 
vide food simply into food and drink, since the latter, 
if milk, for instance, may be more really rich in nourish- 
ment than are many solid forms. Nitrogen is a large 
part of the composition of the animal body, but we 
cannot draw it from the air, of which it makes four 
fifths, as we do our oxygen, but must take it always 
in a state of combination. Albumen, casein, fibrine, 
and half a dozen lesser combinations, contain it in full 
measure for our needs ; all being found in meats, fish, 
eggs, milk and its products, wheat and other cereals, 
and many of the vegetables. These make our first 
group, but as each is more or less dependent upon the 
other, we will take them in the natural order : 



Food a} id its Preparation, t 169 

« 

1. Water. 

2. Nitrogenous principles, called now, more often, 
proteids. 

3. Hydrocarbons, or fats, otherwise calorics. 

4. Carbohydrates, as starch, sugar, gum. 

5. Inorganic materials, salt, etc. 

There are a few principles which do not fall strictly 
within any of these groups, alcohol, vegetable acids, 
and pectin or vegetable jelly being the chief. But for 
all ordinary purposes these five are the divisions it is 
our business to understand. The hydrocarbons, or 
fats, consist of carbon and hydrogen in combination 
with only a very small portion of oxygen. The car- 
bohydrates, or sugars, are carbon, oxygen, and hydro- 
gen, the last two always in such exact proportion to 
each other as to form water, and both fats and car- 
bohydrates coming under the head of non-nitrogenous 
principles. Water leads, because our bodies when 
fully grown are made up of about two thirds of water, 
and the food we eat contains from one to ninety-five 
per cent, of it. 

The proteids or albumens are familiar to us in the lean 
of meat, in eggs, and in cheese, the amount of this prin- 
ciple varying greatly. The lean of meat has from 15 
to 21 per cent. ; eggs, in both white and yolk, 12.5 
per cent. : fresh cow's milk, 3.4 per cent. ; cheese, 25 
to 30 ; dried codfish, 30 ; wheat flour, 10 to 12 ; peas, 
beans, and lentils, 22.85 to 27.7 per cent. 

Fats or hydrocarbons we have from both animal and 
vegetable kingdoms, the cereals, like corn and oats, 
containing from 4 to 7 per cent, of fat. 

The carbohydrates are chiefly of a vegetable nature, 
the housekeepers knowing them as starches and sugars, 
— under the starches being included all the starches of 



1 70 Household Economics. 

grains and seeds, Iceland moss, gums and dextrin. 
Salts, as calcium phosphate, or lime, and common salt, 
give hardness to the bones ; but both these and water 
can be dismissed. The remaining three are known 
under other names ; the proteids as ' ' flesh foods, ' ' the 
fats as ' ' heat foods, ' ' and the carbohydrates as ' ' work 
foods." And fight as the various schools may over 
details, these divisions remain the most expressive of 
real facts. We are as bodies nearly one half muscle, 
and this muscle is one fifth proteid, and the nitrogen 
of this proteid must be furnished by proteid again, 
because neither fats nor carbohydrates contain it. 
Every bill of fare, then, must provide for it ; the body, 
even when idle, cannot do without it. 

Two famous chemists, Voit and Pettenkofer of 
Munich, have experimented so faithfully and minutely 
that they have accounted for every particle of food that 
passed through the body of a man. They have noted 
also how much of his own body wasted away when he 
ate nothing. On this basis they constructed ' ' standard 
dietaries," that is to say tables showing the average 
amount of each of the chief food principles that are 
required to keep an average muscle worker in good 
condition when doing average work. 

In England, much the same conclusions were reached ; 
but in that country no attention had been paid to the 
matter till in 1862 and 1863, starvation threatened 
among the cotton spinners in Lancashire and Cheshire. 
Dr. Edward Smith, whose book on Foods is one of 
the most compact and valuable in existence, was com- 
missioned by the British Government to examine into 
the dietetic needs of the operatives, and in a report pub- 
lished in 1863, he gives tables showing the food con- 
sumed per week by 634 families, classifying the amount 



Food and its Preparation. 171 

of the different food principles. It was determined 
then that the lowest amount of food on which an 
unemployed man can keep off starvation is 35 ounces 
of good bread and enough wholesome water to satisfy 
thirst daily. 

Coming now to the actual amounts of food principles 
required for a workingman of average size, we have : 

Proteids. Fats. Carbohydrates. 

118 grammes 56 grammes 500 grammes. 

One ounce contains 28.34 grammes, and the word 
has replaced all old-fashioned methods of averaging by 
grains, ounces, and pounds. So it must be carried 
firmly in your minds until its use becomes second 
nature. Most of these proteids must come from the 
animal kingdom, and if represented by fresh beef, 230 
grammes would be required, — this consisting of 18 
grammes of bone and tendon, 21 of fat, and 191 of lean. 
In the city of Berlin the daily average consumption of 
meat is 135 grammes per capita ; in New York, 226 
grammes ; in I/mdon, 274 ; but the last is too high, the 
well-to-do eating much more meat than their bodies 
need, and paying the penalty in gout, rheumatism, and 
kidney disease. 

The German soldier in garrison is allowed 120 
grammes of proteids, 56 of fats, 500 of carbohydrates. 
Professor Atwater, one of our highest authorities on 
food, allows 150 grammes of proteids, 150 of fats, 500 of 
carbohydrates, for an American at hard work, as we 
work faster and our climate is more exacting than that 
of Kurope. Compare this with the ordinary food of 
a poor North German family, a man, wife, and child 
five years old, whose dietary Professor Boehm recorded 
for a week, and which consisted of : Potatoes, 41 lbs. ; 



1 72 Household Economics. 

rye flour, 25 lbs. ; meat if lbs. ; rice, 5 lbs. ; rye bread, 
12 lbs., and a very little milk. Translating this into 
food principles, we have for the three persons per day : 

Proteids. Fats. Carbohydrates. 

175-5 gms. 41 gms. 12.51 gms. 

This is not only very insufficient in amount, but 
also absolutely wrong in proportion. And at this 
point I may add a word as to potatoes for food. L,ong 
ago William Cobbett denounced the potato as a staple 
article of food. That it is a cheap food is a popular 
delusion, 25 lbs. of potatoes being required to supply 
the amount of carbon contained in 1 lb. of bread, while 
35 lbs. are needed to furnish the nitrogen in 1 lb. of 
bread. One pound of oat-meal is worth six pounds of 
potatoes, containing as it does 73 per cent, of carbon, 
as against the 17 per cent, of carbon in potatoes. 

Mathieu Williams, whose book, The Chemistry of 
Cookery, is invaluable to every investigator, says of 
the potato : 

"The bulk that has to be eaten, and is eaten, in order to 
sustain life, converts the potato feeder into a mere assimilat- 
ing machine during a large part of the day, and renders him 
unfit for any kind of vigorous mental or bodily exertion. If 
I were the autocratic Czar of Ireland, my first step towards the 
regeneration of the Irish people would be the introduction, 
acclimatizing and dissemination of the Colorado beetle, in 
order to produce a complete and permanent potato famine. 
The effect of potato feeding may be studied by watching the 
work of a potato fed Irish mower or reaper who comes across 
to work upon an English farm where the harvestmen are fed 
in the farmhouse and the supply of beer is not excessive. The 
improvement of his working powers after two or three weeks 
of English feeding is comparable to that of a horse when fed 
upon corn, beans, and hay, after feeding for a year on grass 
only." 



JFood and its Preparation, 1 73 

Summing up, then, as to nutritive values, we know 
that we must call proteids, otherwise nitrogenous or 
albuminous foods, whether drawn from the animal or 
vegetable kingdom, as principles absolutely essential 
to human life. To do their work in the best way, they 
must be taken in easily digestible forms and be easily 
assimilated by the organism. Their relative dietetic 
value is therefore determined by their digestibility. 
If of two foods of like composition one is more easily 
digested than the other, it is for this reason a more 
valuable food stuff, and this value depends not only 
upon its intrinsic quality, that is to say, whether it 
comes from the animal or vegetable kingdom with its 
chemical peculiarities, but upon how it has been pre- 
pared for digestion. 

To secure the most appetizing result is one province 
of cooking, and this matter of flavor is quite apart 
from the working constituents of food. 

" A pinch of pepper, a cup of coffee, a fine juicy 
strawberry, — what of these?" writes Mrs. Abel in 
her admirable treatise on Practical Sanitary and Eco- 
nomic Cooking, which received the Lomb prize from 
the American Public Health Association. "They 
may contain all five of the food principles, but who 
cares for the proteid action, or carbohydrate effect of 
his cup of good coffee at breakfast, or what interest 
for us has the heating effect of the volatile oil to which 
the strawberry owes a part of its delicious taste ? ' ' 

Flavor, savoriness, are all aids to digestion, but this 
means something very different from our American 
theory of black pepper besprinkling everything. The 
use of sweet herbs, bay leaf, parsley, spices, are 
regarded as a foreign fashion, and the American who 
says : " Give me good plain cooking ! " has his national 



174 Household Economics. 

portion of dyspepsia in large part because of the lack 
of intelligent use of these things ; — what the German 
calls " Genussmittel " — pleasure-giving things. The 
plainest, simplest, food by their use is made enjoyable, 
and this is far removed from the heavy over-seasoning 
of what we know as " made dishes." 

Only the fringes of this phase can be touched upon 
here, but all of us may turn to Mathieu Williams's 
delightful book, The Chemistry of Cookery, or to Mrs. 
Abel's equally valuable monograph, including also the 
Rumford Kitchen Leaflets, and study out for our- 
selves the things we could easily have learned in child- 
hood, since our cooking schools now teach food 
principles and proportions, and food charts are now 
provided in all of them. The knowledge should be 
so thoroughly learned as to become an instinct, and 
to meet the varying needs of a large family without 
this knowledge is merely fumbling in the dark. 

All this brings us naturally to the fact which is a 
portion of our evolution, and a part of the definition 
we are at last compelled to accept. 

In the many attempts which have been made to dif- 
ferentiate man from the other animals by one telling 
phrase, that which describes him as ' ' the cooking 
animal" is as good as any. He is distinctively that ; 
and cooking is a process as essential as it is distinctive. 
It is essential to our humanness in that by minifying the 
difficulties of digestion it sets free more energy to add 
to our superior powers, and that in artfully mingling 
and supplying the needed elements, it increases our 
length and strength of life. 

Human life, modern human life, is complex. Grass 
maintains the cow, but the cow is not of a sprightly 
intelligence, neither is the sheep. A handful of dates 



Food and its Preparation, 175 

feeds the Arab, a cucumber the Turkish porter, a strip 
of raw blubber the Esquimau ; but the needs of civiliza- 
tion call for other faculties than are possessed by these. 
The simply fed Arab is healthy — so is the cow. The 
Turkish porter is stroug — so is the horse. The Esqui- 
mau has no dyspepsia that I know of, neither has he 
anything to boast of in either politics or religion. 
Civilized life is full of changeful demands on the 
human system ; sudden drains and strains occur ; 
complexities of wear and tear, varying periods of 
physical and mental outlay, which have to be met by 
varying supplies of nutrition. Civilized life is none 
the less ' ■ natural ' ' for being thus complex. It is a 
great mistake to suppose nature is always simple. She 
stops at nothing in intricacy, and we need never fear 
passing the bounds of "natural" living, so long as 
we keep well. • But the health of a modern man is not 
to be maintained by the regimen suitable for an oyster, or 
a goat, or even a pig. Simplicity is not his main de- 
mand ; nor elaborate and strange articles, or a coarse 
abundance. He needs an intelligent provision, a flexi- 
ble and variable food supply, presenting always the 
essential elements, but varying in combination as his 
needs require. 

The service of cooking in reducing effort for the 
alimentary machinery is also perfectly natural. Nat- 
ure always follows the line of least resistance, and her 
labor-saving inventions surpass Connecticut's. One 
of the main lines of advance in nature is towards the 
saving of energy, and the life of man, being always 
within nature, does not herein depart from it. But it 
is no saving of energy for the human race to have 
more spent in the cooking of the food than there is 
saved in the eating of the cooked food. Our present 



176 Household Economics. 

system, whereby six hours of working time are spent 
in handling food by half the adult population, is not 
at all justified by the very inferior product of all this 
crude labor. You may think this is a high estimate, 
but a preceding lecture has proven that it is not. 

The reason that cooking so fails of its purpose, is 
that its practice is far below the rank of other human 
industries, and therefore oftener more of a hindrance 
than a help. If man's clothes were made as badly as 
his bread is, or man's houses constructed with as little 
success as his dinners, there would be the same com- 
plaint raised in regard to tailoring and building as is 
now heard over cooking, and numbers of shortsighted 
reformers would clamor for a return to the simpler 
living of the coat of skins and the hollow tree. It is a 
disgraceful position for humanity to turn tail in the 
great march forward ; to return to the kindergarten 
because the university is too complex ; to "want to go 
home" because the journey is long and hard. We 
wish to answer questions, not beg them ; to conquer 
our difficulties, not yearn for savagery because civiliza- 
tion is more laborious. 

Cooking holds varied place in relation to humanity. 
In the large sociologic sense, it is simpty a nutritive 
function of the race, one of our distinguishing tertiary 
processes, as natural and necessary as mastication on 
the one hand or transportation on the other. But in 
the more common way of looking at life, it is to us, 
among our other human uses, an Art, a Science, a 
Handicraft, and a Professson. These essentially and 
always. Superficial^, it is now two things more : a 
Trade and a Service. 

That it is a Trade, under our existing system, brings 
into play the enormous element of adulteration, — of 



Food and its Preparation. 177 

which I shall speak later ; that preposterous process by 
which a reasonable race deliberately weakens and 
poisons its own food ! 

That it is a Service, leaves the pursuance of this Art, 
Science, Craft, and Profession in the hands of the least 
capable people among us, a piece of imbecility under 
which we suffer extensively. Apart from these two 
gross abuses, which are by no means permanent, let us 
look at the four-faced function more seriously. It is a 
profession or calling, because its right performance 
requires the specialization of individuals to that service. 
It cannot be rightly pursued by a person who has other 
things to do ; note that from the present standing of 
household industry ! To say that our women should 
each and all be trained cooks because humanity needs 
trained cooks, is like demanding that they should be 
trained physicians, architects, etc. The Cook is a 
needed functionary all by himself, or herself. 

It is a Craft, because much manual dexterity is re- 
quired of the trained cook, a thing not called for by the 
profession of the law, the church, or medicine. Cooking- 
has at once the dignity of a profession from its close 
relation to deep human needs ; and the usefulness of a 
craft in the skill used in daily and unfamiliar practice. 

It is a Science, because it involves a knowledge of 
laws of its own, a science as much as medicine, and 
being all to health that medicine means to disease. 
And as the science of medicine involves on the one 
hand knowledge of the body to be treated, and on the 
other the substances used in treating it, so does the 
science of food involve the same knowledge, — and 
need for its much more constant use. When our cooks 
are as wise as our physicians, our physicians may all 
turn cooks. Their old occupation will be gone. 



178 Household Economics. 

What the skilled physician does after we are sick, 
the skilled cook does before ; puts into our bodies 
something to help them work rightly. The work of 
the physician as compared with that of the cook is the 
work of a mere tinker, cobbler, darner, and mender, 
compared to the work of the smith and the shoemaker, 
the composer and constructor of any kind. The cook 
makes, the physician mends. But alas ! the cook 
makes so ill, that all the physician's mending is of 
no avail, — he makes mischief daily, yes, tri-daily, 
mischief often past finding out. And what won- 
der when we choose for arbiters of our physical 
well-being the lowest and least educated minds 
among us. 

Still further, cooking is an Art. This the other sci- 
ences and professions are not. It is a craft, remember, 
in that it requires manual dexterity ; a profession, in 
that it requires highly trained service ; a science, in 
that it involves wide, deep, and exact knowledge ; and 
beyond all these it is an Art — the highest form of 
human activity — in that it is open to direct inspiration 
of genius ; is a form of expression. To the highly 
organized cook, the cook " born, not made," there are 
primal flavors like the primal colors, with all their 
infinite shadings and blendings, harmonies, and con- 
trasts ; there are dominant tastes like the dominant 
chord in music, with all subtle variations and expan- 
sions ; there are moods to be expressed, schemes to be 
carried out, all as legitimate and elevating and noble 
and useful as are the other arts. 

A menu has even been made the vehicle for a decla- 
ration of love, as witness that famous one of the French 
chef in Pendennis, which Thackeray is said to have 
taken from life. 



Food and its Preparation^ 1 79 

" I declared myself to her," said Alcide, laying his hand on 
his heart, "in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed 
to think it was agreeable. Where cannot love penetrate, re- 
spectable Madame Fribsbi ? Cupid is the father of invention ! 
I inquired of the domestics what were the plats of which Ma- 
demoiselle partook with most pleasure, and built up my little 
battery accordingly. On a day when her parents had gone to 
dine in the world (and I am grieved to say that a grossier din- 
ner at a restaurant, on the boulevard, or in the Palais Royal, 
seemed to form the delights of these unrefined persons), the 
charming Miss entertained some comrades of the pension ; and 
I advised myself to send up a little repast suitable to delicate 
young palates. Her lovely name is Blanche. The veil of the 
maiden is white ; the wreath of roses which she wears is white. 
I determined that my dinner should be as spotless as the snow. 
At her accustomed hour, and instead of the rude gigot d Veau 
which was ordinarily served at her too simple table, I sent her 
up a little potage a la reine— a la Reine Blanche I called it,— 
as white as her own tint — and confectioned with the most fra- 
grant cream and almonds. I then offered up at her shrine a 
filet de merlan a V Agnes and a delicate plat which I have 
designated as Eperlaji & la Sainte Therhe, and of which my 
charming Miss partook with pleasure. I followed this by two 
little entrees of sweetbread and chicken ; and the only brown 
thing which I permitted myself in the entertainment was a lit- 
tle roast of lamb, which I laid in a meadow of spinaches, sur- 
rounded with croustillons, representing sheep, and ornamented 
with daisies and other savage flowers. After this came my sec- 
ond service : a pudding a la Reine Elizabeth (who, Madame 
Fribsbi knows, was a maiden princess) ; a dish of opal colored 
plover's eggs, which I called Nid de tourtereaux a la Rou- 
coule, placing in the midst of them tw T o of those tender vola- 
tiles, billing each other and confectioned with butter ; a basket 
containing little gateaux of apricots, which I know all young 
ladies adore ; and a jelly of marasquin, bland, insinuating, in- 
toxicating as the glance of beauty. This I designated Ambroi- 
sie de Calypso & la Souveraine de mon Cceur. And when the 
ice was brought in — an ice of plombiere and cherries — how do 
you think I had shaped them, Madame Fribsbi ? In the form 



i8o Household Economics, 

of two hearts united with an arrow, on which I had laid, before 
it entered, a bridal veil cut in paper, surmounted by a wreath 
of virginal orange flowers. I stood at the door to watch the 
effect of this entry. It was but one cry of admiration. The 
three young ladies filled their glasses with the sparkling Ay, 
and carried me in a toast. I heard it — I heard Miss speak 
of me ! I heard her say, ' Tell Monsieur Mirobolant that we 
thank him, we admire him — we love him ! ' My feet almost 
failed me as she spoke." 

At present, to be sure, there is little sign of this art 
sense among our cooks ; but what do we expect ? We 
may find philosophers among servants, but we do not 
find artists. The artist is always free. If we had a hired 
poet or musician in every household, or if our poetry 
and music were practised only by the overworked and 
uneducated housewife, poetry and music would be to 
us only what cooking is now, an ill-performed duty, 
a source of low pleasure and much evil. 

Our apparatus and methods in cooking vary histori- 
cally, locally, and according to means and education ; 
from the primitive hot stove and forked stick to the 
machinery of the modern first-class cuisine ; from the 
savage methods still in use in uncivilized countries to 
the intelligent methods of our great centres of thought ; 
from the miserable outfit of our poor — of that nine 
tenths of the population who cannot earn enough to 
live humanly — to the elaborate and finical extremes 
of the costly kitchens of the rich. Methods and appa- 
ratus vary ; but the needs of humanity do not vary 
accordingly, hence much cause for our low standard 
of cooking and the ill effects thereof. 

From the wandering savage's fire of sticks to the 
modern gas range with all its attachments is a marvel- 
lous step, yet less wonderful to us than the first cook- 



Food and its Preparation, 1 8 1 

ing stove, which to our Puritan fathers seemed an 
unrighteous lessening of the work man, or rather 
woman, must do to properly live up to the full bear- 
ings of the curse laid upon toil in the Garden of Eden. 
That misreading like many another has delayed evo- 
lution and even to-day stands in the way of women, 
who have failed to think out oTtheir prisons builded 
half by themselves, half by the accumulated force of 
tradition and custom. But far beyond coal or gas is the 
new power electricity, which in the beautiful electrical 
kitchen at the World's Fair of 1893 delighted the eyes 
of all who looked. Its costliness was the chief factor 
in the way of its general adoption, and while Tesla is 
promising that it shall in some not distant day be cheap 
as water, another inventor has, after long experiment, 
discovered a method of producing the force that will, 
it is promised, be ready for full application in about 
two years. 

There is no space here for the telling of all that is 
involved in this discovery of the electrician, Dr. William 
W. Jacques of the Boston Institute of Technology. 
L,ike many another hint of these last years of the nine- 
teenth century, it holds a promise beyond any dream 
of the past. It is our business to be ready for it, and 
all power of thought and effort we possess may well be 
given to the study that must, if we comprehend it, 
mean a reconstruction of both thought and action. 

Turning again to this business of cooking, measure 
for a moment the advance we have made in the art as 
compared with that made in others. What advance 
has been made follows the usual lines of human devel- 
opment, when specialization called for the cook, and 
division of labor gave him his place ; then by practice 
he became modified to suit his profession, became capa- 



1 8 2 Household Economics. 

ble of being a cook. When his cooking was done for 
large numbers of people he began to learn the general- 
izations of his occupation, began to learn the science of 
cookery. When in some degree of freedom, the inven- 
tive impulse was allowed to play, when there was room 
for Art, Art came, and the number and variety of com- 
binations and effects increased. Had this process had 
as fair a chance as the others, we should have a differ- 
ent world. 

In the main, however, it was confined to the limits 
which forbid all growth ; work done by a few, for a 
few, — usually done by one, done without chance even 
for specialization, to say nothing of training or study ; 
and where the art impulse was and is practically un- 
known. 

The main reason that our household cuisine shows 
any advance over that of the primitive savage is, that 
some men have become cooks, and developed the func- 
tion and its essential machinery. This development 
has gradually, imperfectly, and with a dead wall of 
opposing ignorance filtered back into the home. This 
is how we come to have a cooking-stove instead of an 
open fire, a choice of egg-beaters, a double boiler, and 
other trifles of like nature. But the development has 
been checked constantly by the hands through which 
every improvement must pass, and the sense of degra- 
dation involved in doing work in such companionship 
keeps our best brains out of this noble, beautiful, use- 
ful, and altogether essential human work. There is no 
other art or science so low as this, so poorly executed, 
so little understood. 

Unfortunately, being human work, a social function, 
it is intimately connected with all other functions, and 
the development of the body politic is sharply checked 



Food and its Preparation. 183 

by this grave deficiency in the nutritive process. Any 
intelligent work in this direction is the matter of a few 
years only, and the formal planning of dietaries for 
infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, and for 
the sick, has been considered the work of the doctor ; 
the doctor in the meantime thinking no more of the 
matter than his unlucky patients. It is only within 
the last decade that medical students have at a few 
points attended lectures on cookery for the sick, and in 
one or two instances formed a practice class and pre- 
pared themselves the dishes which they have since 
taught to many an ignorant mother of a family. Such 
a physician, and the number increases year by year, is 
a missionary at whatever point he may be set down. 
He has learned what in good time all will be taught 
practically as well as theoretically, — that prevention is 
better than cure, and that with good food, pure air, 
pure water, plenty of sunshine, and out-door life, sick- 
ness cannot show its face. But good food leads and 
always must in this daily renewal of the body, and 
thus the knowledge of what is "Good to eat," is the 
keystone without which the whole temple of the body 
falls sooner or later into ruin. 

To see then that the child and the growing boy and 
girl are well fed, means a foundation for a healthy ma- 
turity, otherwise impossible. But in the sixty-five 
million and more inhabitants of the United States, how 
many of them have even a hint of the knowledge that 
would insure this? The children's lunch basket is 
filled by the fond mother with the things the child likes 
best : cake, pie, cookies, pickles, — and by the careless 
mother with anything that comes to hand. The chil- 
dren of this same careless mother have probably slept 
in an unventilated room, and are not hungry for break- 



1 84 Household Economics. 

fast ; the result being that the lunch is eaten on the 
road to school or at recess, and the child thus goes 
hungry for a long interval of time, — a disaster to any 
growing being. The child in freedom runs all day 
long, and however aimless its activity may appear, it 
is enormously in excess of the activity of later life. 
From two to four the child consumes more than a quar- 
ter of the supply required by the working man. From 
four to ten there is a steady increase, while from twelve 
to fifteen a child requires as much food in actual weight 
as does a person in the prime of life, a trifle less than 
the hardest working laborer. Any deficiency in quality 
or quantity is a much more serious matter at this age 
than at any other. 

Boston, which has always been a sort of experiment 
station for the rest of the United States, is coming to 
the conviction that the lunch of the school children is 
sufficiently important to be put under civic control. 
The discussion is still going on, but in several schools 
the experiment has been tried with great success. Mrs. 
Kllen H. Richards, chemist in the Massachusetts In- 
stitute of Technology, and one of the highest authori- 
ties in the country, has prepared a series of students' 
dietaries which were in use during the year 1894-5, i* 1 
the University of Chicago, a full account of which 
dietaries may be found in the New E7igland Kitchen 
Magazine for February, 1895, a prelude on the same 
subject having appeared in the number of the same 
magazine for July, 1894. Mrs. Richards appeals to 
school boards all over the country for consideration of 
the vital interests involved and writes : 

" In nearly every state in the Union, there is an agricultural 
experiment station, and in many there are agricultural colleges. 
The Government, representing the people, in this way expends 



Food and its Preparation. 185 

large sums annually for the food of any citizen, even though 
his body and brain may represent hundreds of thousands of 
dollars of invested capital, while the brute animal is worth 
only one or two hundred dollars. . . . The prevalent disre- 
gard of the importance of human dietetics is especially notice- 
able in connection with the life of students. Farmers know 
that their oxen and horses must be well fed in order that they 
may do their best work. On the other hand, college trustees 
and professors too frequently think that they do their duty by 
their students if they provide a sufficiently heavy load to be 
hauled. If a student breaks down, the remark is heard on all 
sides, ' What a pity he studied so hard !' And no one asks, 
'Was he well fed?'" 

Under this head of the preparation of dietaries, we 
may also include markets and marketing, adulteration, 
and the general supervision of food, since all make 
part of the dietary, as of all civilized living. Markets 
must include*also the groceries where green as well as 
dry provisions are sold, and the demand for scrupulous 
cleanliness of place and handling is to some extent 
backed by law, and should be to a much greater extent. 
Adulteration with all its dangers and the methods of 
detecting adulteration means for us only one more hint 
of the work to be done, but Mrs. Richards has an ad- 
mirable little pamphlet on the subject which should be 
owned by every housekeeper. She has also prepared 
a small case of tests in bottles for use in the kitchen, 
and these contain all the ordinary simple tests for 
adulteration. 

More and more, we see, the trend is toward scientific 
handling of all that makes up civilized living. The 
single housekeeper is at a steadily increasing disadvan- 
tage. We are being pushed, — often against our wishes 
and protesting wildly as we go — but still pushed, tow- 
ard that combination which alone can lighten burdens, 



1 86 Household Economics. 

lessen expenses and make possible for the majority the 
good things known now only to the minority. This 
business of living is a science, nor can any one woman 
master all its countless details. The time has come for 
the work of the specialist, and the end of the smatter- 
ing of knowledge which thus far has been the allow- 
ance of most women. There is work enough for all ; 
no woman need lack, but the time is ripe for it to take 
such coherent form that each may know and perfect 
her own, and cease once for all the aimless, heart- 
breaking, detailed distraction that for most of us makes 
the bulk of what we call living. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES. 

Chemistry of Foods, by Dr. Beal. 

Chemistry of Food, by Dr. Allen, Armour Institute. 

Food Materials and Their Adulteration, by B. H. Richards, 

The Rumford Kitchen Leaflets. 
Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning, by Ellen H. Richards. 
Food Adulteration, by Jessie P. Battershall. 
Food and its Adulterations, by Arthur Hill Hassall. 
Meat Inspection, by Thomas Whalley. 
Infectiousness of Milk, by the Massachusetts Society for the 

Promotion of Agriculture. 
Potable Water, by Floyd Davis. 

Physiology of Bodily Exercise, by Ferdinand Lagrange. 
Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book : What to Do and What 

Not to Do in Cooking, 
fust How, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. 
Mrs. Rorer's Philadelphia Cook Book. 
Practical Cooking and Di7iner Giving, Mrs. Henderson. 
In the Kitchen, by Mrs. B. S. Miller. 
Good Living, a Practical Cook Book for Town and Country, 

by Sara Van Buren Brugiere. 
French Dishes for American Tables, Pierre Caron. 
Cuisine Classique, by Urbain Dubois. 



Food and its Preparation. 187 

Carhne, GouffS and Soyer. 

Diet for the Sick, by Mrs. Mary A. Henderson. 

Diet for the Sick, by Mary Boland. 

Catherine Owen's Books : Choice Cookery, Ten Dollars Enough, 

etc. 
Canoe and Camp Cookery by "Seneca." Forest and Stream 

Pub. Co., New York. 
Miss Parlod's Camp Cookery. 
Delicate Feasting, by Theodore Child. 
Practical Sanitary and Economical Cooking, by Mrs. Mary 

Hinman Abel. The Iyomb Prize Essay. 
The Easiest Way, by Helen Campbell, chap. xii. 
"Student Dietaries," by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, New England 

Kitchen Magazine, 1895. 
How to Feed the Baby, by Dr. Charles Page. 
Cold Dishes for Hot Weather, by MM. Ysaguirre and La Marca. 
The Century Cook Book, by Mary Ronald, The Century Co., 

New York. 
A Study of Dietaries, by Amelia Shapleigh, from Report of 

College Sentiments Ass'n, 1892-93. 
"Luncheons for School Children." by Ellen H. Richards, Am. 

Kitchen Magazine, May, 1875. 
"A Student's Lunch Room," by Ellen H. Richards, Am. 

Kitchen Magazine, Feb., 1895. 




fc-w 



CHAPTER X. 

CLEANING AND ITS PROCESSES. 

Cleaning the Essential and Permanent Household Industry — 
The Excretory System of the Household Organism— Fric- 
tion, Exposure, and Decay — Essential and Necessary Waste 
— The Grave and the Garret — Fuel and Flies— The Dirt we 
Make — Cleaning, Mechanical and Chemical — Primitive 
Household without Excretory System— Semi-Annual At- 
tacks on Dirt — Elements of Cleaning Processes, Sweeping, 
Dusting and Washing — Development and Excesses — The 
New England Housewife and her Dutch Prototype — Fluff 
— Dust and its Dangers — Bacteria and Microbes — Antiseptic 
Cleaning — Light and Cleanliness, Physical, Mental, and 
Moral — What it is to be Clean, and the Results. 




iI^KANIylNKSS is next to godliness has, in these 
latter days, taken on almost the significance of 
cleanliness is godliness. Ten great industries, 
the parents of all arts we know to-day, have passed, save 
two, into the hands of men, and one is passing. Cook- 
ing and all matters connected with food may in time 
have no place in the home itself, nor is it necessary in 
the last analysis that they should. But cleaning is a 
process which, from the personal side with the always 
more and more beautifully and perfectly appointed 
bath-room to its perfected and perfecting forms in anti- 
septic handling of all sources of infection, can never 
pass. Sanitation is its summary and sanitation should 

188 



Cleaning and its Processes. 189 

and must become a part of every intelligent woman's 
working outfit. 

We have already drawn the analogy between this 
household industry of cleaning and the physical func- 
tion of excretion, which may seem to some far-fetched, 
to others perhaps, unpleasant. Yet no other com- 
parison so well fits the facts. The functions are not 
only analogous but identical. The Household organ- 
ism is a living structure in the same sense that an 
oyster shell is. It is part of man, an essential part. 
He could not live, as he is now, without the household 
as it is now. His household structure changes with 
him, grows with his growth and strengthens with his 
strength. It deteriorates also as he deteriorates. It is 
part of him. 

The structure of the house like all organic structures 
dies ; that is, it wears out. The state of being lived 
in it is an exhausting one. Inorganic material re- 
mains unchanged. L,et the human being take his por- 
tion of these inorganic materials, put them together in 
organic forms, live in them and presently they die. 
In other words, use them and they get used up. That 
is, after all, all there is in any form of dying. If ill 
constructed or allowed to get seriously out of order, the 
structure dies more quickly. That is all, yet, do the 
best we may, all living things it would seem must die. 

Build the house perfectly. Guard and tend it with 
utmost skill, it has its period, and in the meantime its 
tissues waste from year to year, from day to day. 
That waste of tissue is identical with the waste of tissue 
in the house of flesh in which we live. If we diligently 
remove the waste matter and constantly supply fresh 
material as far as possible, we are performing the ex- 
cretory function. 



1 90 Household Economics. 

From all our innumerable pores hourly, yes, momen- 
tarily, exude waste products of the process of living. 
Within, the blood runs darkly laden with the waste 
matter of fibre and tissue, and besides that is the large 
disposal of the unusable material in our crude food sup- 
ply. Proper removal of all these keeps the body clean ; 
clean is in such case the synonym for healthy, and 
proper removal of analogous waste of the house keeps 
it clean and healthy too. 

There is a vast difference in the relative waste of dif- 
ferent tissues. A house of wood wastes faster than a 
house of stone ; dies faster ; is harder to keep clean. 
If that house of wood lined with cloth and paper 
these die faster than the wood ; are harder to keep clean. 
If the house of wood be lined with cloth and paper, 
be filled with a multitude of intricate articles offering 
multiple surfaces to friction and decay — composed also 
of substances of varying destructibility — we arrange 
for ourselves a home dying most swiftly and always 
hardest to clean, and the vital energy of its inhabitant 
must be ceaselessly spent in the removal of enormous 
waste. 

Precisely as our own vital energies are overtaxed 
when the system is clogged with effete matter, and the 
whole organism struggles to throw it off through pores 
and glands, this extra exertion greatly interfering with 
the free use of energy in other directions, so does the 
overfilled home, clogged with furniture, and choked 
with surplus cloth and paper, ashes, garbage, waste of 
all kinds, tax the energies of the occupant to throw 
off the injurious mass. 

No less is it true and on the same principle that, as 
the presence of effete matter in the body invites disease, 
so does the presence of surplus effete matter in the 



Cleaning and its Pi'ocesses. 191 

house invite disease, the invitation being generally 
accepted. 

The Household Economist, trained and educated, 
will come to some sound conclusions on this subject. 
When we genuinely come to regard our homes to be 
extensions of ourselves, as is the workman's tool, or 
the sensitive bow of the violinist ; when their internal 
processes are as our internal processes, we shall have a 
care how we build and fill them, and what we do 
therein. 

Iyike the physical excretory processes, those of the 
house are twofold. One is the removal of waste of 
tissue ; the other the removal of waste material from 
the new matter supplied. To so select the materials 
of our houses as to have them afford the least waste of 
tissues, and to so select their contents and especially 
their more transient supplies as to have them afford the 
least waste, is one of the chief efforts of the scientific 
Household Economist. 

Follow the progress from wood to coal ; from coal to 
oil or gas ; from gas to electricity, and note the decrease 
in waste matter and its accompanying decrease of 
labor. 

Compare a room filled, as are most of ours, with in- 
numerable movables and dustables, masses of stuffing 
and draperies, and mere piling up, with a room pure 
and beautiful as a temple, rich and soft in color, full 
of curving lovely lines, but mainly hard and smooth in 
surfaces, and possessing few movables, and consider 
attentively the accompanying decrease in labor. 

Think for a moment what it is to the body to be 
compelled to spend most of its internal energies in sim- 
ply clearing out and cleansing itself; how digestion, 
respiration, and circulation,— every other vital process 



\ 



192 Hotisehold Econom ics. 

suffers and necessary external exertion becomes well- 
nigh impossible. Then think what it is to the home 
dweller to have to spend all her vital energy in clean- 
ing that home, and its turbid contents ; how the other 
domestic industries suffer in consequence, and how any 
outside interest or exertion becomes almost impossible. 

Is it not very plain at this very point, how Household 
Economics touches directly on Social Economics and 
is involved in it and with it ? Is it not plain how vitally 
important is this excretory system of the household, to 
the people within it, and the people without it ; to the 
world of which it is a part ? 

We cannot detach one part of the human organism 
from another, nor dissociate its essential processes. 
It is plainly then of deepest importance to the house- 
keeper, to the family, and to society, that our household 
economy be in the same condition of clear, clean, health- 
ful activity, as is necessary in the individual body, and 
in the State. Since we can all see that friction pro- 
motes waste in the tissues of a house, we should have 
them so composed and arranged as to avoid friction as 
far as is consistent with right use. Since exposure is 
another element of destruction, we should preserve 
from exposure. Since decay takes place even in smooth 
and guarded substances, we should know how to choose 
those which decay most slowly. 

The law sums itself up in reducing as far as possible 
the conditions of essential waste. Some there must be, 
but as the difference between cleaning a porcelain-lined 
sink and a wooden one, so will be the difference be- 
tween cleaning the scientifically built, lined, and fur- 
nished house, and the rag-bags, waste-baskets, and 
dust traps we are content to live in now. Not content 
with the waste of our useful articles we even preserve 



Cleaning aitd its Processes. 193 

them when past use. We maintain graveyards in the 
garret and mausoleums in the cellar, wherein more 
things majr gradually return to dust, for our further 
labor and. dirtiness. 

Our grandmothers did it ? Yes, but our grand- 
mothers had not modern conveniences to fall back 
upon, nor did they have moth-breeding furnaces, and 
other modern engines of destruction. 

As to the materials we now bring in for the purpose, 
itwould seem, of " furnishing employment," the steady 
stream of cheap reading matter, writing materials, 
sewing materials, playing materials, dressing materials, 
and, mightiest of all, eating materials, with all the 
ceaseless and debasing labor in keeping them clean and 
clearing them away, is a condition which goes far in 
accounting for our low development in more ways than 
one. 

Excessive excretion is not only unprofitable to the 
system ; it is a condition of disease. Our household 
industries are as yet, at best, in a low form of develop- 
ment, and this naturally compels the form so often 
used in speaking of them, " degrading." Excess in a 
special function is worse than this. It is not a return 
to a lower but still healthy form ; it is advanced and 
yet unhealthy ; not a physiological but a pathological 
process. 

The fact that we make so much dirt in a household and 
must devote commensurate energy to clearing it up after 
ourselves, is a morbid condition in Household Eco- 
nomics, and so to be studied, not for its morbidity but 
because to know a thing morbid is the beginning of 
cure. To put the case in a more specific light, to de- 
vote the elaborate and highly specialized energies of a 
modern human being to the removal of effete matter 



1 94 Household Economics. 

from its environing structure, is a desecration of God's 
highest creation. That is why Martha was lower than 
Mary. 

It is not a light matter, the way in which we spend 
our time, our strength, our intelligence. The higher 
duties of womanhood, the higher evolution of humanity 
through her, of society through the household, demand 
a more healthful condition of Household Economics 
than this present shows. Our households are sur- 
charged with waste matter, and our lives spent in its 
arrangement and removal. 

Soul, mind, and body are limited by the dustpan. We 
need not therefore jump to the hasty conclusion that 
all cleansing processes are debasing. On the contrary 
there is no function more essential to the progress of 
humanity. To rightly clean right objects is a noble 
work ; as noble as the work of heart and lung and 
kidney and sebaceous gland. It is necessary to health, 
and therefore right to do. But it should be done in 
the ordered, specialized, perfected industry proper to 
humanity and never allowed to consume more than its 
proportion of household or social vitality. 

" I don't see why we are so much dirtier than we 
used to be," said a vigorous old lady the other day as 
she laid down a copy of the Sanitarian. " ' Dangers 
of River Water ' ! We drank what we pleased when 
I was young. This talk about bacteria seems to me 
like all the other fads. It was I/ife Elixir a year or 
two ago. Now its bacteria. For my part I have some 
faith in the gastric juice. It appears to be strong 
enough to digest your ten course lunches, and I rather 
fancy it will manage bacteria. ' ' 

This faith appears to be with many, and in a sense 
the old lady had truth on her side. On the other hand 



Cleaning and its Processes. 195 

we deal with a series of constantly complicating cir- 
cumstances. Philadelphia for instance, once a quiet 
little city, green fields all about, manufactories un- 
known, and stock yards unheard of, — all this true a 
hundred years ago, — drinks daily an extract of its 
grandfathers' bones, since three cemeteries drain into 
the Schuylkill. And on the borders of this once limpid 
river stand factories of all orders whose refuse, often of 
the most obnoxious and even malignant character, is 
dumped or floated into the stream, which receives also 
every form of ordure and filth. We have touched upon 
this point already in our talk on " The Organism of the 
House," but it is an essential portion of anything there 
is to be said on cleaning. 

The gastric juice helps us through many crises, but 
it is not warranted to deal with modern dirt. We are 
perpetually and carefully to remember that we have not 
only all our own dirt to take care of but all the dirt of 
our ancestors. Their lives were given to saturating 
the soil with all forms of sewage, waste water being 
supposed to be no harm to anybody. Kven our cities 
had for long absolutely no sewage system, and thus, in 
New York for instance, with its two hundred years and 
more of human ignorance at work, the ground cannot 
be disturbed without giving off the stored gases of all 
this period, the result being malaria for every suscep- 
tible constitution. 

This for out doors, and the story is true not only for 
New York but for all points, whether in city, town/of 
village, where human beings mass together. How is 
it within doors ? 

Household administration means a state of things 
of the same order. Take the houses we all know, 
perhaps even live in, where carpets are taken up by 



196 Household Economics, 

those who know sanitary laws certainly once a year ; 
by those who do not, once in two or three, perhaps only 
in five or ten or twenty years, the last case being no 
uncommon one even among refined and cultivated peo- 
ple. They seemed clean for they were often swept, yet 
think of the accumulation below. Aged bacteria bided 
their time, burrowing happily in the bed provided for 
them, every heavy step releasing some of the occupants, 
every sweeping more, till in good time came the unac- 
countable disease, pneumonia it may be or more prob- 
bably consumption, and the obituary notice recorded 
" Another visitation of Divine Providence." 

Mrs. Ellen H. Richards tells the story of an experi- 
ment where as much dust as could be taken on the 
point of a pin, was removed from the top of a dining- 
room door, the tops of doors being one of the places 
most often neglected in dusting. One of the pastimes 
of the bacteriologist is to " plant ' ' a little dust and 
watch through the micr6scope the growth of colonies, 
each colony representing one original germ impossible 
to be seen save with the most powerful microscope, but 
whose descendants are visible to all who look out. Out 
of this pin-point of dust grew three thousand living 
organisms, not all malignant, but all enemies of health. 
The dry duster had never reached them. The feather 
duster had no power save for distribution. A damp 
one alone could render them harmless, but not one 
housekeeper in a thousand knows the virtues of a duster 
just damp enough or teaches its use to the housemaid. 

A beam of sunlight in a darkened room shows us 
myriad motes in the sunbeam. But the sun has no 
such dwellers in any beam that ever shone. On the 
contrary these are the otherwise invisible inhabitants 
of the room. Were this room filled with air previously 



Cleaning and its Processes, 197 

filtered by passing through cotton wool, the beam 
would be invisible till it. struck the opposite wall. It 
is dust we deal with, and the heavier the nature of the 
particles the more quickly will they settle, that on the 
tops of pianos and other smooth surfaces being different 
in quality from that in the track of the sunbeam. 

The chemist's analysis shows us in the heavier 
portions of dust ground up siliceous matter pulverized 
by traffic, etc., in the road, sulphate of soda and other 
salts, and general local impurities. If a sample of dust 
is collected and carefully ignited, the organic matter 
burns away, any salts of ammonia volatilize, and only 
the mineral portion remains unacted upon. By many 
such experiments it has been proved that more than 
half the suspended matter in the air is of organic ori- 
gin, most of it composed of germs capable of setting up 
fermentation, disease, and decay. 

Surface soil, such as mud brought in by boots or 
muddy skirts, can be removed mechanically with ease. 
But old dust in ,a carpet, dislodged by a broom, simply 
settles back at any convenient point. Damp tea-leaves 
assist in holding it. So do damp sand or bits of news- 
paper or salt, but the damp helper must be chosen with 
reference to the fact that it must not stain the carpet or 
rug. Nor must it be too wet or so fine that it sinks 
into the substance to be cleaned. 

It is necessary, then, to study substances and what 
mode of cleaning belongs to each, but first is another 
study : that of the forms which seek their destruction. 
Bacteria, yeasts, and moulds, are the three to be most 
dreaded, and these are defined at length in Dr. Prud- 
den's little manual, Dust and its Dangers, which it is 
necessary to know well, adding to it also his Story of 
the Bacteria. 



198 Household Economics. 

Modern life and dust are synonyms. At every turn 
we add to our already too complicated existences more 
forms of dust-holding and dust-breeding property, but 
no manual of how to neutralize their effects is sold with 
them. What we have to learn, then, must come as it 
can, and every woman must study, since possessions 
vary according to taste, the amount of money to be 
spent, and a thousand personal reasons. 

A slight course of bacteriology is necessary for any 
real worker in these lines. In the laboratory of Chicago 
University, for instance, there is a term's work in the 
testing, first of soils in relation to free drainage, a 
knowledge indispensable to the builder of a house ; 
then of water and its sterilization, as well as that of 
milk, with lessons in food adulterations and their tests. 
To this end Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, of the Boston In- 
stitute of Technolog3^, has prepared a " Housekeeper's 
Cabinet," containing a set of bottles with the tests for 
all ordinary adulterations, the steady increase in which 
makes this knowledge more important than ever 
before. 

As to bacteria, there are flourishing colonies of them, 
each student owning one or more obtained by the most 
accurate method which is as follows : 

A given volume of air is forced through a tube which 
has been plugged with cotton batting, heated before- 
hand very hot in order to kill any germs that may have 
been upon it. This cotton, if properly packed in the 
tube, will catch and hold in its meshes every dust par- 
ticle, however small, and with these all the bacteria 
which were in the air forced through the tube. 

The cotton plug is now pulled out with a pair of 
perfectly clean forceps, and is rinsed off into a small 
dish in which the bacterial food is put ; that is, some 



Cleaning and its Processes. 1 99 

preparation with a small portion of gelatine in it. The 
dish is then covered and set in a warm place to stand 
till each living germ grows and multiplies till it forms 
a visible colony. Counting the colonies of course rep- 
resents the number of living germs which were present 
in the whole volume of air forced through the plug. 
Fine sand is often substituted for cotton, and at times 
granulated sugar. Simplest of all is the putting in 
perfectly clean, shallow glass dishes, a thin layer of 
the gelatinous culture medium, and allowing it to 
solidify by cooling. A close fitting cover is on each 
during the process of hardening. 

One of such dishes with the cover removed is set 
in a still place and the dust allowed to settle upon it. 
Five minutes is sufficient. The inorganic parts of the 
dust particle are not to be considered. But the living 
ones find themselves on a newly discovered continent, 
and begin on the instant to multiply and inherit the 
land. 

A small child of five has followed this method, the 
"plate-method," with delight, studying differences 
between mould and yeast spores, and bacteria, and en- 
joying the little case of innocent looking glass boxes 
with the nutrient gelatine contents, as the amateur 
photographer enjoys his camera. In like manner, the 
child can share what to it is the game of testing for 
adulterations, though one may still hope for the day 
when such knowledge may be unnecessary, and pure 
food, pure air, and pure water be the portion of all 
humankind. 

In our primitive stages — that is, our early Colonial 
life — the house had no excretory system, and this re- 
mains true of myriads of villages still. The ground 
y^as considered a sufficient absorber of all liquid sew- 



200 Household Economics. 

age, and the drain, if there was one, was close to well 
or cistern. As to dirt, the New England housewife, 
then and now, had and has a semi-annual cleaning, 
every article in the house that could be moved having 
its own washing and wiping. But even with this the 
cellar went often undisturbed, and piles of decaying 
vegetables and every form of mould, made breeding 
ground for bacteria. 

There are towns in Holland where even the stables 
are scrubbed daily, and a wandering fly or a particle 
of dust is attacked with passionate zeal. Yet in doors 
every principle of personal hygiene is violated at every 
turn. It is the outside of the platter that shines with 
cleanliness. For the inside there had better be no 
question, since methods are all microbe-producing. 

As to fluff, insidious, all-pervading, unconquerable 
fluff, every housekeeper has questioned whence it 
comes. Fluff might be called the ghost of murdered 
dirt. One may sweep and dust and polish, a spare 
bedroom for instance, and before a week is gone find 
fluff rampant under everything. It dematerializes too, 
a foot square rolling into a wad one may hold between 
thumb and finger. 

Dealing with this enemy is simple. The abolition 
of most old-fashioned sweeping with a broom is one of 
the most effectual means. A small brush for corners, 
and a good carpet sweeper, does the work for the rest 
of the room if carpeted or with heavy rug. For mat- 
tings and oiled or waxed floors a long-handled soft 
brush, and for all the constant use of dampened dusters 
and floor wiping-cloths. Fluff is the lint from carpets 
and beds, meeting with dust enough as it forms to 
give it consistence. Under the damp cloth it shrinks 
and disappears. 



Cleaning and its Processes. 201 

For carpets and rugs a woollen cloth wrung out of 
warm water in which a little ammonia has been put, a 
tablespoonful to a pailful, not only brightens the carpet 
but removes dust so perfectly that there are no mate- 
rials left with which to make fluff. It must never be a 
wet cloth, but wrung till nearly dry. 

To pick up loose threads or bits, brush up footmarks 
or aggressive dirt and then wipe, takes less than half the 
time of the ordinary sweeping. There is far less dust 
on the furniture, and keeping clean is made easier in 
every way. If fluff still appears remember that it is the 
cleanest form of inevitable dirt, and ignore it till the 
time is ripe for its abolition. 

This is the lightest form of household waste or re- 
fusel, but in closest connection stands the mass of ashes, 
sweepings, waste paper, and general garbage. As to 
disposition of all this, each city appears to be experi- 
menting on its own account, St. Paul, Minnesota, 
having developed what appears to be the best system 
in the United States. All household refuse is emptied 
into hard-wood casks, forty-five gallons each, hermet- 
ically sealed by means of an iron rod to bottom of cask, 
carried and shipped some fifteen miles out, to a plant 
which converts it into fertilizing materials in an entirely 
unobjectionable manner. The casks are cleaned there 
and returned ready for use again. In the populous 
part of the city, refuse is collected between the hours 
of midnight and 9 a.m., a new departure for this 
country and insuring the least annoyance during the 
process. 

This is the most difficult phase of cleanliness for the 
household, since as a rule we are at the mercy of the 
average garbage collector. But all of us have certain 
legal rights, and we are to understand what we must 



202 Household Economics, 

demand from the city government at any point ; in brief 
as follows : 

Garbage must be collected six times a week. 
Kitchen garbage, sweepings, cut grass, waste paper, 
old boots and shoes, and all other combustible waste is 
to be called for and removed from all buildings. The 
contractor should issue cards giving his name and 
address and stating the days for collecting garbage in 
particular streets and districts, and designating between 
what hours collectors will call. A copy of such card 
should be left at each and every building once a month. 
The contractor should be fined for any neglect in serving 
these cards of notice. 

Philadelphia has given her definition of a clean cellar 
and now requires it as follows : 

ist, a cemented floor and sides ; 2d, free from dirt, 
ashes, animal or vegetable matter, and perfectly dry ; 
no cesspools or privy vaults, and whitewashed thor- 
oughly once a year. For the year 1894, 675 filthy cel- 
lars were notified and compelled to clean. This should 
be a universal law. 

All this is merely illustrative. We have no space for 
directions in the many lines' that cleaning must take, 
but from attic to cellar it is possible to reduce all its 
formula and know the needs of each. Antiseptic 
cleaning, in use in all hospitals, dispensaries, etc., is 
learned by the trained nurse, but belongs no less to the 
necessary knowledge of the house mistress. There are 
manuals containing full directions, but here a physician 
must be consulted till the time comes when the names, 
properties, and uses of all simple disinfectants are taught 
as naturally as the multiplication table. Either this 
must be, or such combined and hearty progress in true 
living, that disinfectants become unnecessaty, a millen- 



Cleaning and its Processes. 203 

nial state of things, but one we can bring about if we 
will. 

This business of cleaning like every thing else is first 
of all personal, and there is not a bit of what we call 
civilization that does not compel more and more atten- 
tion to it. Take the elevated railroad, belching forever 
as it goes its cloud of cinders, dust, and grime ; a cloud 
so angry and potent that dissectors show us in plates 
of the lungs the portions which have taken on traceries 
of black pigment as part of their very substance. Soft 
coal in many parts of the country compels the same 
results, not only within but without, and I have even 
gone so far as to insist that soft coal and the moral 
sense cannot exist side by side. 

I^et us take a very positive demonstration of the truth 
of this rather extreme statement. In a university town 
of a Western state where these lectures were at one time 
given, I stood one November day under a sky blue and 
clear as midsummer, watching thick black columns pour- 
ing upward not only from the great chimneys of many 
manufactories, but from the tall stack at the back of 
the university itself. They rose to fall again in a rain 
of fine pellets, each with its odor of creosote and atom 
of oil warranted to make a smear out of even the tiniest. 
From homes in lesser degree came minor columns, 
always of the same nature and effect, till even the 
blades of grass seemed coated each with its film of 
soot. 

If this film had remained out of doors, the face of 
nature, helped by dew and rain, might have borne it. 
But the face of man was another matter. For the few 
who had water enough to wash freely, there was rela- 
tive cleanliness. For the mass to whom water was a 
luxury, since one man owned gas works and trolley 



204 Household Economics. 

line and water- works as well, trie water sold as it were 
in driblets — the battle was practically unknown. 

This was one phase accented by the columns as they 
rose and fell. For another came the film of oily black, 
coating everything inside and out. In the college 
library the thirty thousand volumes had the gray and 
venerable expression of a century, and often in the 
choicest, one found the faint black imprint of a thumb 
and finger which the reader had been powerless to keep 
clean. Grimy women with mops and cloths wiped 
away the deposit from window and wall and floor, — 
a daily task. 

1 ' I have lived in this town for three years, ' ' said an 
irascible and discouraged professor, "and I contend 
that the soot has gone to the brain of them all. I 
myself, even, in whom a passion of cleanliness is the 
birthright, gaze unwinkingly on a smut on the counte- 
nance of my fairest student, and decline to look at my 
own collar and cuffs. Chicago is insufferable, but 
this somehow seems even worse. There is creosote in 
every brain cell. Of that I am certain, and naturally, 
it displaces gray matter. Not a human being in this 
town, therefore, is in a quite normal condition, the de- 
posit having been too much for all of us. They seem 
to think it a great joke if they think at all. To me it 
accounts for all that holds the town back, and I con- 
tend that a place which is calmly and unquestioningly 
given to smut and smear, will need an earthquake to 
rouse it from its apathy. Soft coal is as great a curse 
to the user as a diet of potatoes or rice has proved it- 
self to a nation, but that is another story." 

Here then, again, comes a pointing to the fact that 
all begins in personal cleanliness, and that whatever 
hinders or prevents the personal form, hinders and pre- 



Cleaning and its Processes. 205 

vents the development of all. Once more then we have 
the interdependence of home and state, and once more 
we return to the consciousness that whatever harms 
one harms all. Cleanliness then is ethics, and is owed 
from the individual to every other individual. The 
matter of food may have its strong personal bias, with 
no particular harm done unless indeed the individual 
is bent upon abnormities of taste. But this matter of 
cleaning concerns the State, and the man who will not 
wash, usually because he has never had anything to 
wash in, or taught the delights of the bath, must be 
made to have his tub and know its uses. 

For the home then, comes first this business of per- 
sonal cleanliness, from the first bath of the new born 
child, on through the knowledge of all that water and 
kindred agencies may do for every age, and all phases 
of life for this body of man. The cleansing of gar- 
ments, with every most delicate and careful manner of 
renewing their beauty, by laundry processes whether 
of iron, mangle, or pressure ; what may safely be used 
as bleachers with no danger of injuring fabric, and the 
laws that govern the handling of each tissue whether 
silk, linen, cotton, or woollen — all this is an essential 
part of the knowledge of every woman, since, whether 
she has her own home or not, she at least has knowl- 
edge of the homes of others, and is interested in the 
care of her own belongings. 

Hard on this comes the last form, vital no less in the 
State than in the home, since, where perfect cleanliness 
is the law of the house, and the child sees what honor 
it holds, what type of wisdom it demands to make all 
processes as nearly unseen as practicable, yet always 
constant, always certain, such child will not, as he 
passes from childhood to manhood, and the larger life 



206 Household Economics. 

of the State, give less care to the public cleaning than 
he has known under his own roof. It is because, in 
part at least, such work is held ignoble and de- 
grading — because only inferiors as a rule fulfil its 
needs — that our public housekeeping makes us the 
shame of civilized nations. But the white brigade that 
marched, fifteen hundred strong, under Colonel George 
Waring, our greatest sanitary authority, down Broad- 
way in the spring of 1896, were witness of what had 
been done, and what will be done as this business of 
public housekeeping passes from the hands of untaught, 
unscrupulous, and thieving politicians into the control 
that long ago should have demanded its rights. To 
keep the world clean— this is one great task for women. 
Not in the old sense of scrubbing away at her own 
steps, back or front, a passionate scouring of tins, and 
cleaning of stored inutilities, but in the newer one of 
making the whole world so clean that her own bit of it 
must perforce be the same. For means to this end I 
commend you to the manuals whose names are given, 
and to the study of the best and newest forms of sani- 
tation, above all in hospitals, since in these the latest 
and most absolutely secure methods of cleaning and of 
keeping clean are adopted and worked out in full. 

It is no part of the present lecture to give special 
forms of cleaning. Those will all be found in the long 
chapter devoted to " Cleaning," in The Easiest Way in 
Housekeeping and Cooking. Lamps alone, with their 
present petticoated exuberance and variety of styles, 
require a manual to themselves, and more than one 
woman now makes a living in going from house to 
house as lamp-trimmer and care-taker. Bric-a-brac 
also, in its profuse and increasingly delicate orders, 
means another industry, that of professional duster. 



Cleaning and its Processes. 207 

The peripatetic mender of glass or porcelain finds also 
a vocation, since breakage is the law where maids and 
the feather-duster sweep and swoop at will. Draperies 
and rugs, and their laws, call for another. In short, 
the modern home, where wealth brings in according to 
fancy, means a battalion of experts in charge, and this 
will be true till another law is learned, and certain now 
unknown simplicities are recognized as the necessity 
of beauty. 

The abolition of much that we know as bric-a-brac, 
would mean enormous gain in time for the bulk of 
housekeepers, no less than deep rest to an over-bur- 
dened world. And as a suggestion of a future in which 
we may be certain that evolution will give us not only 
a higher art sense, but a deeper sense of what belongs 
to the community, let me quote the word of one whose 
insight is at* many points unmatched by that of any 
English-speaking man, Edward Carpenter of England : 

"Possibly we shall some day again build our houses or dwell- 
ing places so simple and elemental in character that they will 
fit in the nooks of the hills or along the banks of the streams 
or by the edges of the woods without disturbing the harmony 
of the landscape or the songs of the birds. Then the great tem- 
ples, beautiful on every height, or by the shores of the rivers 
and the lakes, will be the storehouses of all precious and lovely 
things. There men, women and children will come to share in 
the great and wonderful common life ; the gardens around will 
be sacred to the unharmed and welcome animals ! There will 
be all store and all facilities of books and music and art for every- 
one. Bvery village, every little settlement will have such hall 
or halls. Gladly will each man and more gladly still each 
woman, take his or her treasures, except what are immediately 
and necessarily in use, to the common centre, where their value 
will be increased a hundred or a thousand fold, by the greater 
number of those who can enjoy them, and where far more per- 
fectly and with far less toil, they can be tended, than if scattered 



203 



Household Economics. 



abroad iu private hands. At one stroke, half the labor and all 
the anxiety of domestic care-taking will be annihilated. . . . 
Neither man nor woman will be tied in slavery to the lodge 
which they inhabit ; and in becoming once more a part of 
nature, the human habitation will at length cease to be what it 
is now for at least half the human race — a prison." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND R^FKRKNCKS. 

Bacteria and their Products, by Germain Sims Woodhead. 

Dust and its Dangers, by T. Mitchell Prudden. 

Chemistry of Cooking and Cleanitig, by Mrs. Ellen H. Richards. 

The Chemistry of Cleaning, by Professor Vivian Lewis, Armour 
Institute. 

"Thoughts about Dust," by M. A. Molineux, M.D., New Eng- 
land Kitchen Magazine, April, 1895. 

"Dangerous Properties of Dust," by F. A. Abel, Nature, vol. 
xxvi., p. 19. 

"The Proper Disposal of Household Refuse," by Committee 
of the Civic Club, Philadelphia, The New England Kitchen 
Magazine, June, 1895. 





CHAPTER XI. 
HOUSEHOLD SERVICE. 

The Servant Question — Total Inadequacy of Existing Treat- 
ment — Failure to Grasp Essential Distinction between Ser- 
vice and Labor — Service a Condition Peculiar to Humanity 
— Philosophy of Service — Division of Labor and Co-ordina- 
tion—Primitive Co-ordination Compulsory — The Army of 
Xerxes as Illustration of its Inferiority — Evolution of Ser- 
vice — Effect of Service on Character — Status of Domestic 
Service in Social Economy — Present Condition — Some 
Secondary Conditions of Domestic Service — The Stranger 
within our Gates — Reports of Bureaus of Labor — Phila- 
delphia Special Inquiry in this Connection — Syracuse, N. Y. 
and its Work — Household Employees in Australia — The 
Training School and its Results — Matters of Life and Death 
— Diploma and License — Servant, Employee, Artist, and 
Professor. 




E have now come to that most vexed and vex- 
ing question of household economy as at 
present practised, domestic service. It is a 
functional difficulty, an imperfect, arduous, and painful 
performance of those internal activities essential to the 
life of the household. No domestic question is more 
discussed, none is more vital to the comfort, health, and 
progress of our lives ; yet no real light is thrown on 
it, no definite advance is made. 
14 209 



2 1 Household Economics. 

Perhaps this is largely because of our misapprehen- 
sion of what is the subject under discussion. We call 
it the "Servant Question." It is really the service ques- 
tion. Function comes before organ ; the servant is the 
product of the service. 

It is service which we have now to consider ; domes- 
tic service as related to household economy, and so to 
social economy. In our common treatment, we discuss 
such points as the inadequacy of our servants, the in- 
subordination of our servants, the ingratitude of our 
servants ; or, on the other hand, the inconsiderate 
treatment of our servants, the social inequalit)^ of our 
servants, the lack of proper knowledge in the mistress 
of our servants. These are all interesting points, but 
none of them touch on the condition of which they are, 
indeed, but symptoms. 

L,et us enter upon a brief and necessarily suggestive 
study of service, knowing that it can be no more than 
a preface to the larger efforts of any course to come. 
No part of that course demands more thorough under- 
standing than this. On this condition of domestic ser- 
vice rests the status of household economy, and on the 
status of household economy rests the development of 
social economy, which is the science of living. This 
is no side issue of passing interest. It is a vital process 
of social life. 

What then is the subject we are to study? Service. 
What is " service " ? Is it equivalent to " labor " ? By 
no means. There can be labor without service, but, 
on the other hand, there can be no service without 
labor. 

Service is a form of labor. 

What are its qualities ? Is it, as we are .so sublimely 
told by the minor philosopher, the doing of something 



Household Service. 



211 



for someone else, the humanizing and elevating process 
of exchange of activities in which we all live, and so 
serve each other, and so are all servants ? 

No, I grieve to say. It is not. This use of the word 
service is a derivative one. It is used in the sense of 
all intelligent activity serving some purpose, being in- 
tended for something or someone, and so "serving" 
them. As the musician serves to make music, so serves 
the world, so is our servant. It is a far-fetched and 
illegitimate conclusion. 

The essential quality of service, as distinguished 
from other forms of labor, is that it is done under the 
direction of some one person, for the further expression 
of that person's will. ' ' Ye cannot serve two masters. " 
" The servant " implies ''The Master " ; " service " 
is conditioned upon "mastery." It is not that the 
labor of the servant "serves" some one person or 
twenty. In that sense, truly, we all serve each other. 
But it is the servant himself who ' ' serves ' ' as an ex- 
tension of personality to the master ; a further self 
through which to do his will. 

The difference between the servant and the laborer 
is the difference between obedience and agreement, the 
difference between submission and acquiescence. 

Your musician, your statesman, your scientist 
1 ' serve ' ' truly ; they serve humanity, as a book serves 
to hold truth, as a conduit serves to bring water, as 
glass serves to transmit light. Musician, statesman, 
and scientist serve consciously and intelligently, and 
they glory in their service. But where is the master 
to these servants? The moment your musician or 
artist or poet, your statesman or inventor is bought or 
hired to serve a master, — to express another's will — 
their glory is gone. ' ' Mr. So and So' s poet ' ' would cut 



212 



Household Economics. 



no higher figure than " Mr. So and So' s butler," did 
he but serve to sing his master's will merely. Even 
the poet-laureate, last survival of the bard of older 
days, suffers some little diminution in his high place in 
that he has to sing on certain occasions, and we, with 
sure instinct, rightly doubt the product of a surrendered 
power. 

Let us look back now to the evolution of human 
labor, see where service entered into it and how and 
why ; and what its course has been, keeping always 
an open and unprejudiced mind. 

Service, be it said in passing, is a condition peculiar 
to humanity. Save for the ants and their slaves, no 
creature other than man moves a limb except at the 
instance of his own desire. But with us, from the be- 
ginning, one has bowed to another and we have extended 
our interhuman authority to the doors of death and- 
beyond them. Now let us very earnestly divest our- 
selves of such superficial apprehension of the words 
we are to use as would prevent the deeper perception 
of their meaning. 

The verb " to serve," in the sense in which it is 
used in our domestic service, demands as an essential 
quality that other verb " to obey." It we doubt this, 
look at our common objection of "insubordination" 
among our servants. It is a "subordinate" position. 
They are " under orders." They "must obey." But 
does not any worker obey ? you will ask. Are we not 
all under direction of someone else ? Not in the sense 
of " the servant," by any possible stretching of words. 
We hire a servant not to serve the ends of a given in- 
dustry, but to serve us. That service involves not the 
acceptance of a few main directions, but incessant obedi- 
ence to varying orders. ' ' Servants obey your masters. ' ' 



Household Service. 2 1 3 

If it is the work they do which makes them servants, 
if all men who work for each other are servants, 
what makes the difference between serving as an ap- 
prentice and being a free workman ? The workman is 
the same. It is the condition of tutelage which makes 
the difference ; the immediate, incessant subservience 
to another's will. 

The best growth of the human creature comes from 
the development of our two great human characteris- 
tics : judgment, the power to decide among conditions ; 
and will, the power to execute that decision. These 
faculties, like all others, improve by practice. Decide 
and do continual^, and we gain power to decide and 
do. Surrender this power, waive our judgment, and 
give up our will, and we remain undeveloped. That 
is why "servants are like children." That is why 
certain associate characteristics, "the vices of the 
slave," always distinguish the condition of servitude. 
It is a sub-human position. 

We are to make searching analysis of the birth and 
growth of human activity, in order so to understand 
our present conditions ; and it must be done on a 
scientific basis. Life means change, change means 
motion ; motion, in an organ, means action. Action 
in an organism becomes two-fold : internal and ex- 
ternal. External action, in an organization, divides 
again into individual and co-ordinate activity — the 
action of the individual to maintain his individual life, 
and the co-ordinate action of the organization to main- 
tain its corporate life. 

In this line of development, the vegetable world is 
limited almost to the internal action of an organ ; ex- 
ternal action, as of an organism, is checked by their 
relation to the food supply, which is fixed. The only 



2 1 4 Household Econom ics. 

external action of a plant is where it circumvents ob- 
stacles, turns towards the light, etc. 

The animal organism, being free to run after its food 
supply, developed of necessity a high degree of exter- 
nal activity ; but made only slight advance towards 
co-ordination. Packs of hunting-dogs or wolves are 
vaguely co-ordinated. The service of the sentinel 
among some grazing animals, and among the beavers, 
is rudimentary organization. The exception of the ants 
and bees, a notable one, rests on their having a fixed 
food supply, plentiful, and obtainable by simple means. 
This gave them the fixed habitat and surplus energy 
for a common end, which flows into organic relation 
as inevitably as nomadism, over-exertion, and diverse 
ends prevent it. 

Man went through the same process. As a carnivo- 
rous nomad he remained unorganized, save for occa- 
sional hunting and fighting combinations, no nobler 
than the dog pack. His pastoral era was a singular 
step. The full and constant supply of meat without 
the exertion of hunting or the danger of fighting, de- 
veloped nervous energy to a vast extent, while his 
ferocity was necessarily checked by the nature of his 
food supply. He had to preserve — more than to de- 
stroy — and it " altered human nature" tremendously. 

Still, there were limits. It took many cattle to have 
their increase maintain a family, and families grew. 
Many cattle took much grass, much grass took much 
ground. Men had to wander and live far apart : 
and the progress of humanity rests upon men's living- 
together. Still, co-ordinate labor made some progress 
in the pastoral era. The family was knit closely to- 
gether by their continued isolation and wandering life. 
What relation did establish itself was between the 



Household Service. t 215 

members of the family on lines of affection and mutual 
need, and between them and their cattle who kept 
them alive. 

With the development of the family into the tribe 
came a sense of human relationship hitherto unknown. 
This big family had a common beginning and a com- 
mon end, and so learned common effort. Here comes 
in " service " in its specific sense. 

The hunting savage could make no slave, because 
he could not hunt for him. That would be to be his 
slave ; and to arm him for the hunt meant to free him. 
To hunt for a living means freedom, as dust is free. 
The pastoral savage could make slaves and did. There 
was abundance to eat, and the maimed slave could 
guide the herd while the master guided him. Pastoral 
slavery is mild and pleasant. The family was, in any 
case, a despotism. There was no distinction between 
son and slave, or wife and slave, till it came to prop- 
erty — and "that is another story." 

But with agriculture came a great change. Again 
the food supply increased in amount and decreased in 
extent, so to speak. The hunter must have forty 
square miles, to eat ; the shepherd four, perhaps ; the 
farmer with a few acres can raise more food in less time 
than either of them. And now that his food supply 
was stationary he could build a house. Then with the 
immense increase in surplus energy, came the multi- 
form activities of human life ; and those multiform 
activities demanded in their very nature co-ordinated 
labor- 

As we have already seen in our study of the develop- 
ment of industry, human labor is developed in propor- 
tion to the number it is done by and the number it is 
done for. In this industrial sense the house servant 



2 1 6 Household Economics. 

is limited absolutely in that his work is done for one, 
the bottom limit. It is only human at all in that it is 
not done for oneself. Kffort for personal ends is the 
effort of the animal ; human effort is essentially co- 
ordinate, but this is its lowest form. 

Divided and co-ordinate labor is the external func- 
tion of the human organization. Just as our internal 
organs labor co-ordinately for the preservation of our 
lives, and therefore of their own, finding a far better 
livelihood as well fed, well warmed, well guarded 
organs of definite use, than ever they found as hap- 
less amoebae, so we, human beings, labor co-ordinately 
in our well-defined activities for the preservation of 
the social life, in which is our own ; finding a far better 
livelihood as artists, artisans, and the like than ever we 
did in the disconnected freedom of the noble savage. 

This growth, however, required in the beginning 
compulsion. When the increasing power of the brain 
called for more than one pair of hands to execute its 
intentions, the larger brain knew no better way of 
securing the aid of the other hands than by enforced 
service. Compulsory servitude is the first form of 
co-operation ; — of working together. In its lowest 
form the superior party in the arrangement deputed 
all the work to the inferior, contenting himself with 
direction merely, and living without personal labor. 
The evil effects of this condition are clearly instanced 
by any advanced form of chattel slavery. 

The unintelligent and un desired labor of the slave 
degrades him ; and the position of the master, cut off 
from the human relation, degrades him also. 

The failure of this process of laboring through 
others instead of with them, finds glaring instance in 
the rout of the army of Xerxes, His soldiers were 



Household Service. . 217 

slaves whipped to the front by their officers and masters. 
The little band of free Greeks, who did their own 
fighting, easily overcame them despite the vast pro- 
portion in which the Greeks were outnumbered. 

Soldier, artist, craftsman, every form of human 
activity which reaches high development, does so in 
proportion to its freedom. That is a mere truism after 
all— growth means freedom. A thing restrained can- 
not grow. 

The only evolution of which service is capable, lies 
in the multiplication of individual needs and the de- 
velopment of specialized servants for each need. From 
the Man Friday era to the servant ridden household 
of the Oriental, or our own horde of retainers, we 
find House Steward, Housekeeper, Cook, laundress, 
I^ady's Maid, Valet, Groom of the Chambers, Butler, 
Coachman, Footman, Stable Groom, House Maid, 
Chamber Maid, Parlor Maid, Still Room Maid, Pantry 
Maid, Scullery Maid, Nurse, and Nursery Governess, 
with all their second and even third assistants down to 
"Boots" and "Buttons," comprising the list of a 
fashionable New York or L,ondon menage. 

It is vain multiplication of titles after all ; they are 
all servants and they all serve us. Now one human 
creature, however wealthy or great, is too limited a 
field to offer full scope even to his own activities, to 
say nothing of those of numbers of other people. 

That is why the evolution of service from the cower- 
ing slave of earliest times, who did all things he was 
told as far as his powers went, to the haughty lady's 
maid who will not do the work of the parlor maid, or 
any other maid or man whatever, has produced no 
higher result. All these complex activities are bent 
to serve personal needs, a hopeless limit, 



2 1 8 Household Economics. 

Understand clearly that the effect of service upon 
character is not the effect of the thing done — it is the 
effect of the special condition or relation in which it 
is done. Xerxes' soldiers and the Greek soldiers were 
both fighting. The difference was between bond and 
free. The effect of service upon character lies in the 
relation, the abnegation of one's own will processes 
and power of judgment, and the establishment instead 
of an artificial connection between one mind and 
another body. It is an absolutely artificial relation ; 
it cannot grow into that perfect automatic action which 
characterizes high organic development. It simply 
hobbles two or more human beings together, and 
reduces their progress accordingly. So thoroughly 
has this been proven in the advancement of the world, 
that whereas all labor was once the slave's, now we 
have left in all our field of industry no personal servi- 
tude save in the household. The house servant and 
the body servant are all that remain to us from the 
time when the pyramids rose from the plain, and 
nation after nation fell because its internal organ- 
ism was out of order ; the co-ordinate activity which 
is national life being wrongly carried on. 

We complain of our servants for manifesting certain 
traits which are just as inevitable a product of their 
position as are their complements in us a product of 
ours. But one trait is developed in both master or 
mistress and servant, a certain irresponsibility which 
is a fruit of the curious relation. The servant is a 
mindless body, as it were ; the master or mistress a 
bodiless mind. I^eft apart, they are both lazy ; to- 
gether, the master is lazy-bodied ; the servant lazy- 
minded. And they are both inclined to be cruel, as a 
fruit of that irresponsibility. 



Household Service. • 219 

It is a dangerous thing to interfere in orderly natural 
processes ; and the relation of master and servant does 
so interfere to a large extent. 

So stands domestic service in our social economy, — 
the last survival of the lowest form of human labor. 
By its presence it deteriorates other forms of labor ; 
the sense of degradation being still kept in mind ; the 
child growing up in an atmosphere where " menial ser- 
vice " is still a living thought, and by its low order of 
labor keeps back the household industries, on the fur- 
ther development of which our new progress now rests. 

In its present condition, we have a curious deadlock. 
The increasing complexity of household life has evolved 
our household industries to a degree where their proper 
performance demands a higher order of ability than is 
found among servants. The condition of domestic 
servitude allows only the development of a certain de- 
gree of ability, not sufficient to rightly perform our 
complex domestic industries. So there we are. When 
we find a person able to carry on modern household 
industries, that person will not be our servant. And 
when we find a person willing to be our servant, that 
person is unable to carry on modern household in- 
dustries. 

These are the facts. 

Before passing on to the kind of labor which is 
essential to the smooth working of the modern house- 
hold, I wish to call your attention to some of the sec- 
ondary conditions of our domestic service system. 
Note, first, that it is performed almost entirely by 
women. Now women and men exist in about equal 
numbers on the earth, and should be monogamously 
married. The order of industry which puts into a 
given household more than one woman to serve its 



2 2 o Household Econom ics. 

needs robs that woman of a home. What manner of 
system is that which nnhomes half the women of the 
world to serve the other half? 

Every woman should be free to marry, to become a 
mother, and every mother should have a home of her 
own for her children. This cannot be for those who 
occupy our smallest, poorest rooms, go in and out the 
back door, and do the work which none of us will do 
when we are able to hire it done. Our system of house- 
hold service is not only low in its industrial develop- 
ment and limited by the condition of servitude, but it 
is also essentially a celibate system, and as such essen- 
tially wrong. The " house maid" is rightly called, 
maid she is expected to be, or possibly widow, but 
marriage and motherhood are, as a whole, incompatible 
with the position of servant. The "housewife" is 
the mistress and she is served by maids, direct survival 
of the time when residence with the lady of the manor 
was the only safe life outside the convent, and service 
the condition of residence. 

The only amelioration to this condition to-day is the 
stinted and grudging allowance of time to visit family 
and friends, or a room to receive them ; and the com- 
monly resented marriage of the "maid" whose time 
and strength are deemed so much better used in our 
service. 

Observe the effect of this system on the development 
of household industries and arts. What progress can 
be expected in a young woman of a low type, in work 
which she only does for a little while and discontinues 
once for all on marriage ? It keeps the grade of labor 
down to the level of the least developed half, of the 
least developed class, in its least developed age. 

Another secondary condition of our domestic service 



Household Service, • 221 

is the isolation of the maid and its results. The mem- 
bers of the household are no " company " for the maid. 
She lives in social isolation, one of the most painful 
conditions of existence. It is for this reason that it is 
so much easier to keep servants when we have more 
than one. 

Another feature is on the side of the mistress ; the 
constant presence in the family, the most intimate and 
incessant association of one who is and must be a 
stranger within our gates ; an alien element whose in- 
fluence on our children must be constantly watched, 
at whose entrance conversation ceases or is checked, 
and whose presence is in open contradiction to that 
privacy on which rests the essential thought of home. 

From the employer's standpoint, there are certain 
very marked advantages in domestic service. First, 
and most obvious, is the fact that wages are not only 
relatively but absolutely high ; for, aside from actual 
wages, there is also board, lodging, fuel, light, and 
laundry, all of which the worker in trades must pro- 
vide for herself. No capital is required, as in the case 
of type-writers and sewing-machine workers ; nor is 
the girl, under our prudent system of taking untrained 
domestics just landed, forced to spend anything in pre- 
paratory training. Professor I^ucy Salmon, of Vassar 
College, collected statistics from three thousand em- 
ploying families, and found that on a wage of $3.25 a 
week it is possible for a servant to save annually 
nearly $150, "in an occupation involving no outlay, 
no investment of capital, and few or no personal ex- 
penses." The wages paid are relatively higher than 
those in other occupations, for in Professor Salmon's 
comparison of the wages received by 3000 employees 
in the country and the same number in the city, it was 



222 Household Economics. 

found that of 6000 teachers in the public schools the 
average salary actually paid is less than that paid to 
the average cook in a large city. 

The second advantage claimed for domestic service 
from the employer's standpoint is the healthfulness of 
the work, which includes not only regularity, but also 
variety. A third alleged advantage is that a home, in 
externals at least, is insured to the worker. The 
fourth advantage is that a training which makes the 
worker better fitted for married life is certain. And 
the fifth alleged advantage is that for those who like 
it the work is easy. 

Such are the arguments urged upon the army of 
underpaid, half-starving needlewomen in our great 
cities, and on that other army in factories and shops, 
who are implored to consider the superiority of the ad- 
vantages offered by domestic service. Astonishment 
that these armies of women prefer the factory and the 
shop is unending, nor is it generally believed that any 
good and substantial reason for such a choice can ex- 
ist. As a means of arriving at some solution of the 
problem, some six hundred employees of every order 
were interviewed under circumstances which made 
their replies perfectly free and full ; and the results of 
these interviews tallied exactly with others obtained 
by an inquiry in the Philadelphia Working Women's 
Guild, a society representing seventy-two distinct oc- 
cupations. A report of this inquiry was made by Mrs. 
Eliza S. Turner, the President of the Guild, a sum- 
mary of which was given in the Working Womans* 
Journal published by the Guild. In the situation as a 
whole, the objections from those who had tried it, and 
those who had been urged to try it, were practically 
the same. Kind as mistresses might be, there was 



Hotiseliold Service. % 223 

still the loss of personal liberty and the social ostra- 
cism which goes side by side with it, and no training- 
school on earth is likely to alter these facts, or make 
the self-respecting American girl accept the form of 
labor which bears, in spite of our best endeavors, the 
stamp of degradation. Certain stipulations were made 
by all, some laying stress upon one point, some upon 
another, but the general average uniting in those that 
follow : 

1. A definition of what a day's work means, pay- 
ment for all over-time required, or certain hours of 
absolute freedom guaranteed, especially where the posi- 
tion is that of child's nurse. 

2. A comfortably warmed and decently furnished 
room, with separate beds if two occupy it, and both 
decent place and appointments for meals. 

3. The heaviest work, such as carrying coal, scrub- 
bing pavements, washing, etc, to be arranged for if 
this is asked, with a consequent deduction in wages. 

4. No livery if there is feeling against it. t 

5. The privilege of seeing friends in a better part of 
the house than the kitchen, and security from espion- 
age during such time, whether the visitors are male 
or female. This to be accompanied by reasonable re- 
strictions as to hours, and with the condition that work 
is not be neglected. 

6. Such a manner of speaking to and of the server 
as shall show that there is no contempt for housework, 
and that it is actually as respectable as other occupations. 

It will be seen at once that, save with the most intel- 
ligent and fair-minded mistresses, there is not the 
slightest chance of carrying out these very simple stip- 
ulations, and that thus we find ourselves precisely 
where we were in the beginning. 



224 Household Economics. 

At this point, it must again be said that this is one 
of the vexed questions of modern life ; that hardly any 
two mistresses agree as to the facts and their practical 
or ethical bearing, and that it has been and remains 
almost impossible to look at the matter impersonally. 
Volumes have been written, and volumes more will be 
written, only a few of which have an} 7 real right to a 
hearing. One of the best considerations of the matter 
has been written, by Professor Lucy Salmon ; but even 
her work, as she herself recognizes, has sharp limita- 
tions. The labor bureau reports of the various States, 
led by that of Colorado, have but just begun to inves- 
tigate general conditions. In the meantime, though a 
very large proportion of American families keep no ser- 
vant, the reports of the last census give the number of 
women engaged in domestic service as over a million, 
the lowest rough estimate of the aggregate wages paid, 
being $160,000,000, and the .support received in addi- 
tion to this money wages amounting to about as much 
more. 

It is through the hands of the domestic servant that 
a large part of the finished product of other forms of 
labor must pass, and the economic aspects of the ques- 
tion grow constantly in importance. A just considera- 
tion of all the points involved is infinitely difficult, 
since even in the face of the damaging facts given us in 
labor reports as to actual conditions, the mistress who 
listens answers with profound indignation : "My girl 
or girls always had this, that, and the other." 

Drop personal pronouns. It is not the particular in- 
stance, but the general, that regulates conclusions, and 
the sociological student and collector of facts must 
have the final voice. It is quite plain from the inves- 
tigations of the L,abor Bureaus that domestic service is 



Household Service. 225 

in many points more undesirable than any other occu- 
pation open to women. The L,abor Commissioner of 
Minnesota takes pains to state every advantage of the 
domestic over the general worker, and adds : ' ' Only a 
fifth of those who employ them are fit to deal with any 
worker, injustice and oppression characterizing their 
methods." Figures and detailed statements bear him 
out in this conclusion. 

The commissioner for Colorado gives even more 
details, and comes to the same conclusion. A very 
elaborate presentation of facts for both employer and 
employed was given at the Domestic Science Congress 
in connection with the World's Fair in Chicago in May, 
1893, a * which every phase of wrong and remedy were 
discussed. The sum of the remedies suggested con- 
sisted in, first the formation of bureaus of employment 
in every lar.ge city ; second, fixed schedules of pay- 
ment ; third, full preparatory training. 

A keen observer of social facts has stated : The in- 
telligence offices of New York alone receive yearly from 
servants over three million dollars and are notoriously 
inefficient. This sum, or even half of it, would pro- 
vide a great centre with training-schools, lodgings for 
all who needed them, and a system by which fixed rates 
would be made according to the grade of efficiency of 
the worker. Till household service comes under the 
laws determining value, as well as number of hours and 
all other points involved in the wages of a working 
day, it must remain in the disorganized and hopeless 
state which at present baffles our housekeepers and 
deters self-respecting girls and women from under- 
taking it. 

An organization like that suggested is possible for 

every city, and each should have its great agency, cor- 
15 



226 Household Economics. 

responding to the Bourse de Travail in Paris, but even 
more comprehensive in scope. 

Co-operation, or combination in such limited degrees 
that private home life will not not be infringed upon, 
must necessarily make part of such a scheme, but de- 
tails as to these possibilities must be deferred to a time 
when full treatment can be given. 

Very positive indications of change in the popular 
conception of domestic service come from many points. 
The National Household Economic Association, formed 
in 1893, a full account of the work of which is given in 
the Appendix, has had much influence in these direc- 
tions, and its branches in many of our cities and larger 
towns, are all doing efficient work in altering present 
standards and insisting upon training for mistress and 
maid alike. Philadelphia has a Household Economic 
Section in its civic league, and has printed a leaflet of 
Standards of Work and Wages in Household Labor, 
which goes far toward clearing the air. Syracuse, New 
York, is busy in the same lines and has accomplished 
good results. New York announces a Servants' league 
for protection against the extortions of the intelligence 
office, and self-respecting servants are quietly studying 
the question and seeking to understand the ethics and 
the political economy of the subject, two things that do 
not always go together. A long list could be made of 
points where intelligent women are forming leagues for 
themselves and for household helpers, but for each and 
all is the enormous difficulty of dispassionate consider- 
ation of a thing that takes hold upon the very springs 
of life. 

Australia, that wonderful country which seems to be 
solving practically problems that baffle civilization at 
all points, has outlined a scheme that promises admira- 



Household Service. • 227 

bly well. The word servant with all its detested im- 
plications and associations is dropped entirely, the 
substitution being Household Employees. Recognizing 
the necessity of the many hours of labor required by 
our present system of life, two shifts of employees ex- 
change, one coming on from 5 or 6 A.M. to 2 p.m. ; the 
other, from 2 p.m. to such evening hour as is fixed. 
Training schools are included, and all labor is graded 
with a fixed rate of payment for each form and for all 
overtime. It is shown that under such system the cost 
to the householder will be no greater, and the comfort 
and efficiency of service enormously increased. On the 
side of the employee will be the personal independence 
so often lost and so desired, and a standard so much 
higher, that it is claimed a far more intelligent 
class will gladly enter the ranks of household em- 
ployees. 

In England sore trouble in these directions is giving 
rise to a whirlwind of discussion, and an admirable 
pamphlet which has had wide circulation, Democracy 
in the Kitchen, by Mrs. H. Ellis, contains an earnest 
and most suggestive summary of the situation and 
some of the remedies. 

At this point we are forced to drop the subject. We 
have the pros and cons in as compact fashion as pos- 
sible, and I give you such authorities as may be said 
to have any weight ; all other phases, historical and 
otherwise, waiting the time for larger treatment. I 
shall add only that out of such study as ours will grow 
both conviction and action. At no distant day the domes- 
tic employee will be asked to show diploma and license, 
and from servant shall pass through all the transitions 
of employee, artist, and professor, to that high ground 
toward which all service tends, and this matter of do- 



228 Household Economics. 

mestic employment shall take the place that rightfully 
belongs to it. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES. 

The Servant Question, by Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
"Domestic Service," by Prof. Lucy Salmon, New England 

Magazine, 1893. 
Domestic Service, by Mrs. C. L. Stone. 
The Biddy Club, by Griffith A. Nicholas. 
" Domestic Service," by B. P. Whipple, The Forum, vol. i, p. 

M: 25. 
Prisoners of Poverty, by Helen Campbell ; Chapters on Domes- 
tic Service. 
" A Belated Industry," by Jane Addams, of Hull House, The 

American Journal of Sociology, June, 1875. 
Hull House Maps and Papers, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 
Democracy in the Kitchen, by Mrs, H. Ellis, High Stratley 

Cottage, Haslemere, Surrey. 
"Dishonesty and Caste," by Ethel Davis, American Kitchen 

Magazine, 1895. 
"The Home and the Labor Problem," by Helen Ekin Starrett, 

American Kitchen Magazine, February, 1895. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ORGANIZED LIVING. 

Law of Organization in Individual and Species — Organic Evolu- 
tion, Racial, National, Civic, Domestic — Primitive Condi- 
tions of Household Economy — The Woman's World and 
the Man's — How to " Keep the Boys at Home " — Survivals 
and Rudiments — Effects on the Brain — Strain of Contending 
Eras — Relation to Progress — Home Influence — The Matrix 
of Civilization — How We Really Live — Flat, Club, Hotel, 
and Boarding-House — Reaction and Compromise — Lines of 
Development — Scientific Prophecy — Asa Gray aud his Un- 
known Butterfly — Our Possibilities— The Higher Education 
and the Higher Life. 



RIEE and incomplete as are the lines of thought 
we have thus far followed, they must, I am cer- 
tain, speak to us of its vital importance and 
convince us that Household Economics and Social 
Economics can in no wise be divorced. The present 
condition of things in all the phases we have sought to 
understand, is a bar to progress. Its study is one of 
the first duties of civilization. A National Commis- 
sion to inquire into Household Economics, would be 
as important and useful as any bureau of inquiry yet 
instituted. Perhaps w T e may see one yet. 

Diverge and develop as we may, the place we come 
from still modifies us all. The house in which we 

229 



230 Household Economics. 

are born, its conditions and environment, mark us for 
life in brain and body. I^et the social activities of man 
and woman be what they may, while their domestic 
environment remains as it is to-day, our progress is 
rigidly limited. 

At this point let us summarize briefly the thought 
we have already followed. Progressive organization 
is the law of life, the upward line of evolution. 

Organic evolution is the process by which all forms 
of life develop, and this means not merely differentia- 
tion and specialization, but relation. The interrelation 
of organs is an essential condition of their develop- 
ment. In social evolution this is now made clear by 
Sociology. A people must develop certain complex 
and interdependent industries in order to grow to power 
and distinction. Mere numbers of people do not make 
a great race. It must be related, vitally interdepend- 
ent ; so commonly connected as to have some sort of 
common consciousness before they form a distinct racial 
power. 

This racial evolution demands a commensurate na- 
tional evolution, the growth of the administrative 
function being like the growth of nerve and brain 
power in a physical organization. 

Civic evolution calls for the same process. A city is 
more than a number of housed people within a wall. 
A city is a little organism in itself, with its necessary 
structures and communicating streets and public build- 
ings ; its necessary functions internal and external. 
And within the city are the households, each a little or- 
ganism in itself, and obeying the same law of evolution. 

All these outward forms of human life are as vital, 
as essential, as actually connected with the soul and 
man and its true growth, as is his immediate material 



Organized Living. 23 1 

body. The line is unbroken, the soul forming the body 
first, a vehicle of expression, a means of growth. Old 
Chaucer knew it and made his statement in a day when 
it had small meaning for those who read : 

" For soul is form and doth the body make." 

Given the bodily form, the soul continues to find 
expression and growth through clothing and furniture, 
house and cit}^ This last, the city, is the limit of 
material expression in humanity, and through the or- 
ganic activities of body, home, city, and state, we reach 
the largest human entity. 

The ideal city, the city to come, and that we shall 
make possible, is the certainty of that larger thought 
which the twentieth century is to actualize as no other 
has ever more than dreamed of doing. Drummond is 
no dreamer. He is a practical worker for his own 
generation, but in his The City without a Church he 
has given the very heart of the thought with which 
this work ends and begins ; that the life of man per- 
petually enlarges its scope and plan, and that from the 
individual the passage must forever be to the general, 
the individual finding his best development where the 
general welfare is the general concern. 

The household, standing nearest to the body, lowest 
or highest as we may choose to consider it, is thus es- 
sentially limited in man}^ ways ; rightly and nobly lim- 
ited, in ways which work no more restriction than do 
our bodily limits. But the household economy, being 
in its nature part of the social organism, economy, 
should not be limited by the house. The cradle of in- 
dustry must not seek to retain industry in its cradle, 
and that is precisely what our mistaken idea of house- 



232 Household Economics, 

hold economy does to-da}^. It is surcharged with 
functional activity which does not belong there, which 
has long since reached a stage of development demand- 
ing far wider, deeper, and more scientific administra- 
tion and execution than is possible in the private home. 

There was once in the world but one place of living — 
the home. In it were all things done and enjoyed. It 
produced what it consumed, and consumed what it 
produced. Long ago that stage ended. There are now 
in the world two places of living for the larger part of 
civilized humanity — the home and the shop. The 
shop makes what the home takes. All our deepest and 
widest and subtlest ranges of mechanical production, 
bridges, ships, railroads, vast mills, founderies, stores, 
are all to keep in motion activities which culminate in 
home consumption. 

The shop produces and the home consumes. In this 
it still stands for the primal home idea ; the thought in 
that first beginning of home when it was but a hole in 
the ground to eat and sleep and hide in. All the 
beauty and sanctity and power of the home follow on 
this primal thought of security, shelter ; a place in 
which to take food and rest, and gather strength for 
outside use. 

It is at this point that the modern home fails of its 
main function, in that it persists in combining home 
and shop. Any form of persistent industry is foreign 
to the essential idea of home, the place of rest. But 
the man's home to-day is the woman's shop wherein 
she perpetually demonstrates the old song : 

"A man's work is from sun to sun, 
But a woman's work is never done." 

The growth of household industry from the simple 



Organized L wing. 233 

consumption of meat and fruit to all the complicated 
bustle of the kitchen, calls for the extension of that 
kitchen industry outside the home. 

I^et us b}^ all means continue to eat at home. To 
eat together under the shelter of one's own roof is still 
one of the integral parts of the home idea. But there 
is no more need for the immediate presence of the 
cookshop than for the immediate presence of the 
butcher shop, the flour mill, and the dairy. 

The preparation of food at home save in the most 
limited sense, as for instance the use of the chafing- 
dish or the making of fresh tea, does not belong to the 
advanced civilization of to-day. It belongs to the era 
when that preparation was a simple matter, easily 
within the pleasurable exertion of the family itself. 
That should be our limit still. If we wish to prepare 
food at home, its preparation should not require more 
than an hour of the time and a tiny portion of the 
vital force of the family. If it is otherwise, then we 
are expending high forces on low functions ; a process 
as wasteful to the woman who performs it as if all our 
ranks of world up-lifting men spent their forces in the 
low functions of self-defence and self-support. 

We have organized our defensive function into the 
honorable specialization of military and civil service. 
We have organized our self-support into all the com- 
plex activities of farmer, grazier, fisherman, butcher, 
orchardist, and so on, with the manifold distribution 
of their supplies. 

This is in the man's world. T* 
no organization V 




234 Household Economics. 

live and work, remains inorganic, detached, undevel- 
oped ; a survival of past ages. 

It is this underlying condition which makes one of 
the deeper reasons why it is so hard to " keep the boys 
at home." Consider the man's world as compared 
with the woman's. In the developed industries, the 
extra-domestic industries, every man has his kind of 
work and does it, and all kinds of work are inter- 
related. Friction and confusion are largely eliminated. 
Everyone is compelled by the nature of his position 
to ' ' mind his own business, ' ' and there is room for 
expansion and the noble sense of mutual usefulness. 

In the undeveloped domestic industries, one untrained 
woman tries to work at a dozen trades at once, and, if 
she is the mother too, at a constant sacrifice of her 
highest function. The growing boy as he begins to 
enter manhood feels this difference without under- 
standing it ; and in his scorn of home life and desire to 
escape from its restrictions, vaguely voices his under- 
lying consciousness of the lamentable division be- 
tween " the home " and " the world." 

The home is a most essential part of the world, 
not a different thing, yet our thought and modes of 
expression would seem to make it so. Its present 
separation, with all the evil consequences to both, is 
due to the arrested development of our household 
economy. Present with its bodily form ; apparently 
moving with the age, the household carries within it 
conditions so primitive that the true growth of social 
A ~ f e^ery step. 

-t*aMI r»res^ fc both survi- 




Organized Living. . 235 

singular organism, half fossil and half sprout. Small 
wonder then that the family, over whose future spec- 
ulation is incessantly at work, the family, which is the 
soul of the household body, is perturbed and pained, 
shocked, injured, at times destroyed. A large cause 
for the rising sea of family trouble which forms half 
the world's misery comes, not from the wicked world 
outside, but from within the sheltering walls of the 
home we love so well and understand so ill. 

To live in two kinds of life at once ; to spend one's 
days in the nineteenth century, and one's nights in 
the twelfth ; to come home from the stress and press 
of one's fractional share in the widely differentiated 
activities of the world to one's full half of the un- 
differentiated and discordant activities of the home 
— this makes life harder for man than it has any 
right to be, than it needs to be, and so limits both 
his growth and his usefulness. 

And for the woman to live only in one kind of life 
and that of a prehistoric nature ; not to have any share 
at all in the activities of the age she lives in ; to force 
her present-day powers to the steady performance of 
past-day tasks ; what for her ? She lives in touch with 
the vivid life of the modern world, yet her work carries 
the burdens of the past, and her growth and usefulness 
are not only checked but distorted. 

For this inequality 110 man can be held responsible. 
One of our deepest thinkers, fester F. Ward, has 
written what may stand as summary of the whole 
condition. Studying the conditions governing the life 
of woman as a whole, he decides : 

" If there is an evil in the world for which nobody is to blame, 
it is the inequality of the sexes. If there is an illustration of 
the victims of an injurious system countenancing and upholding 



236 Household Econom us. 

that system, it exists in the case of women and the system which 
holds them down. The mere handful of protestors who have 
become aroused within the past few years to a vague sense of their 
true condition, is but the very embryo of the movement which 
would be required to accomplish the emancipation of women." 

It is not so much experience as philosophy which is 
agitating the question. The victims of the system are 
usually silent, or, if they speak, it is but the bitter 
language of discontent, unsupported by the philosophic 
analysis of the subject, which can alone give weight to 
their utterances. The greatest champions of social 
reform are, and always will be, those who possess the 
capacity to grasp great social truths and an insight into 
human nature and the causes of social phenomena deep 
enough to kindle a genuine sympathy and a sound, 
rational philanthropy. 

" This phenomenon, like all others, is the result of causes oper- 
ating through innumerable ages, and for which there is no more 
responsibility than there is for the physical transformations 
which species undergo from the operation of similar causes 
during still more immense periods. Although the results may 
be bad and entail evil upon society, though they be irrational, 
absurd and pernicious, they are none the less due to causes 
sufficient in their time to produce them, and their genesis or 
true explanation, though perhaps too obscure for man ever to 
unfold, would still be traceable to their earliest origin if all the 
circumstances could be known. 

" A state of society if it be bad for one class is bad for all. 
Woman is scarcely a greater sufferer from her condition than 
man is, and there is, therefore, nothing either improper or 
inexplicable in man's espousing the cause of woman's inde- 
pendence. The freedom of woman will be the ennoblement 
of man. The equality of the sexes will be the regeneration of 
humanity. Civilization demands this revolution. It stands in 
the greatest need of the help which the female sex alone can 
vouchsafe. Woman is half of mankind. Civilization and prog- 
ress have hitherto been carried forward by the male half alone. 



Organized Living, • 237 

Labor and production are now suffering from the same cause. 
It is high time that all the forces of society were brought into 
action, and it is especially necessary that those vast complemen- 
tary forces which woman alone can wield, be given free rein, and 
the whole machinery of society be set into full and harmonious 
operation." 1 

Bear in mind always that this is no protest against 
home duties. They are not only important, essential, 
but lovely and noble in their place. My work would 
be utterly lost if I have failed to show the magnitude and 
value of these functions, but it must be plain that their 
degree of development and method of performance are 
below the present grade of civilization. 

This in the deeper and more scientific sense is the 
status of Household Economy to-day. Itself of enor- 
mous importance, its methods are so defective as to 
constitute a steady check on progress. For the better 
understanding of the subject, the course these lectures 
should precede and which they outline is mapped out. 

By a wide study of the existing condition and its 
historic forerunners, we shall be able at least to know 
why, in all this smooth and rushing stream of progress, 
the household wheels still creak so noisily and turn so 
hard. It is as though some primeval ox-cart were 
'brought in to connect with the railroad system, or the 
current of trans-continental travel left its vestibuled 
trains to ford some river on the way. 

A vast amount of the weakness, weariness, and 
nervous prostration of our women is due to this under- 
lying cause. It is not the time they spend that hurts 
them nor the special strength involved. It is that the 
modern brain, enlarged and subdivided, focused on 
great issues and great processes, has to put itself back 

1 Dynamic Sociology hy Lester V. Ward, vol. i., pp. 656-57. 



238 Household Economics. 

into the lenses of a thousand centuries ago. It is the 
weight of all the ages that pulls our women down — it 
is the incongruous pressure and presence of fossil 
customs — they break utterly and die all unknowing 
under the strain of contending eras. 

The effect of this condition upon the progress of the 
world is felt in two ways. One is through the confus- 
ing and retarding effect of these left-over household 
industries and methods on our social industries and 
methods. The other is through the effect on the brain 
of our women, our mothers, and through them on the 
brain of the race. 

If our household industries were in the hands of men, 
their deteriorating racial effect would be largely re- 
duced. On the other hand, if our household industries 
were in the hands of men, they would not remain for 
a week in their present amorphous and disordered 
condition. 

It is because they have remained in the hands of 
women and in the limits of the home, and because of 
the sociological position of womankind, a position as 
to which these pages can have but the word already 
quoted from Dynamic Sociology, but which has had 
constant effect on household economy, that the case is 
as it is. 

That Household Economics and progress are in 
closest relation must be at least indicated by all that 
has gone before. The fact we must face and consider 
steadily is that the present condition of household 
economy tends to produce and develop the kind of 
brain which can contentedly and effectively leap from 
one occupation to another many times a day ; and 
occupations differing not only in kind but in degree. 

Where in the departments of a large business the 



Organized Living. 239 

various employees are given tasks rigidly defined, thus 
carefully preserving the brain adjustment necessary 
to each phase of activity — it being a business maxim 
never to put a twenty-dollar man to do a ten-dollar 
man's work, — the departments of housekeeping in its 
average condition require of one woman the widest 
and most subtle administrative ability, the most labo- 
rious and disconnected executive ability. 

These qualities are diametrically opposed. The 
ability to patiently perform an endless repetition of 
minutely differentiated tasks, like, for instance, the 
washing of dishes ; and the ability to keep all the 
running machinery of a household in order and all of 
its varied supplies in constant renewal according to the 
dictates of economy on the one side, and all the con- 
flicting tastes of the family on the other, — these two 
orders of ability are not to be found together. 

The better able the brain is to content itself with 
disconnected tasks and details, the less able it is to 
manage connected generalities. 

To insist on the two and yet maintain life, provides 
us with a low order of woman who can do all these 
things fairly well, but no one of them well enough to 
realize how defective the others are. 

The average "capable" woman, what the New 
England Yankee knows as " a woman of faculty, ' ' is 
like one of those multum i7i parvo pocket-knives includ- 
ing in itself a multitude of tools not one of them first 
class. Greatness demands specialization. The woman 
thus produced to us is the "market " for most of the 
products of the world, the judge and critic of the 
liberal arts ; the patron of much of the fine arts, 
sciences, and professions. As she is must be largely 
those who minister to her. 



240 Household Economics. 

This compressed and many-sided yet disconnected 
and undeveloped brain she transmits to all the world ; 
to the more active factors in our civilization ; to the 
men who make our books, our pictures, and our laws. 

The smallness and narrowness, the lack of true 
public spirit, the penny wise and pound foolish tenden- 
cies of the popular mind, come largely from the early 
and unceasing influence of our arrested development 
in household economy. 

A matter more seriously important could hardly pre- 
sent itself to the students of sociology. Our social 
economy is largely conditioned upon the existing 
quality of the people who administer it ; but here is 
the more intimate field of Household Economics 
directly affecting the quality of the people. 

In its physical attributes of warmth and shelter, 
light, air, water, and food, Household Economy moulds 
the bodies of the race. Through its logical construc- 
tion and beautiful decoration, and the logical and beau- 
tiful performance of its essential functions, or their 
opposites, it moulds the mind of the race. Through 
the nature and condition of the family itself, so largely 
modified by the economy of the household, it moulds 
the souls of the race. 

Home influence is a larger thing than the most 
ecstatic sentimentalist has ever claimed for it. It 
influences the babe unborn ; the child absolutely, in 
the years which count most in the formation of charac- 
ter and tendencies ; the youth and the adult through 
every step of the long journey. 

The influence of our defective Household Economy 
on children is, in itself, a study for years. From this 
personal effect, on and up into the social influence of 
the lines thus formed ; the constant modification of all 



Organized Living, 241 

life by the interaction of persons every one of whom 
is a product of the home ; the steady outpour upon 
life of the thought and feeling generated by the place 
where we live ; the stream of art and industries, all 
rising in the home and pouring out to flood the world ; 
—this it is which makes the household, now as always, 
the matrix of civilization. Civilization was born from 
the home. From the home it is renewed, and out of 
the home must come the influence that will make, not 
the farce we find it at many points to-day, but the en- 
lighteuer and uplifter of all mankind. 

This is the necessity, and yet every thinking woman, 
above all, any woman who has dealt with her own sex 
as workers and in large numbers, recognizes the fact 
that not only among the least educated and cultivated 
but in as great or greater degree among the comfort- 
able, well-to-do classes, exists a spirit that one is 
tempted to name organized obstruction. 

Women in clubs and councils, and these represent 

the largest intelligence and training, are very apt to 

congratulate each other in periodical summaries of 

woman's progress that in all fields an open way seems 

to lie before her. Four hundred trades are at her 

option and artistic and professional life receives each 

year a larger and larger number of recruits. Now 

and then comes a note of sorrow and dismay at the 

disabilities that still hedge about the woman in trades. 

Yet at this point, where reason would seem to demand 

a question, nobody goes back of the present era and 

asks how it is that for thousands of years she has 

allowed every industry which she originated to pass 

into the hands of men. So far as invention has a 

history, it is always the man who forces the woman 

to give up her heavy stones for grinding and try the 
16 



l\i Household Econom ics. 

mill ; to use an improved loom ; to accept the cook- 
stove instead of the open fire and its back-breaking 
system of cranes and pots ; the sewing-machine instead 
of the needle — in short, all modern conveniences. 

What woman has done with the sewing-machine 
she has done with most inventions for her benefit — 
turned them into new instruments of torture. The 
sewing-machine has enabled her to put a hundred 
tucks where once she put three, and every garment 
is made to hold a wilderness of stitching. Complica- 
tion and always more and more complication has 
become the order of living, and as if in mockery, labor- 
saving inventions crowd our houses and demand a new 
form of skilled labor to take care of them. 

From the beginning of homes or workshops women 
have steadfastly labored at complication and men at 
simplification. The fact that a man is successful in 
business means that he knows how to adapt means to 
ends. His office is a model of compactness ; every- 
thing at hand that can make work swift and easy. 

In every trade, the worker, as dentist or carpenter, 
has his tools in perfect order and arranged close at hand 
so that every motion will tell. The kitchen of a dining- 
car or of a great ocean liner is a model of condensed 
convenience. And while the man worker in these lines 
is condensing his space and making every step and 
stroke tell, the woman worker in the same fields has 
only in scattered instances planned to the same end, 
but goes on in the same old helter-skelter fashion. 

Day by day life complicates. The daily paper brings 
the ends of the earth to our door. More work to be 
done, less and less time to do it in, since other work 
waits and calls. Complexity is the law of being for 
this complex creature we call man, nor is a return to 



Organized Living. 243 

primitive simplicity either possible or desirable save at 
certain points. Men have found out many inventions. 
They have not yet found out how to make their uses a 
unit, and let all share the benefit alike. 

Modern housekeeping represents an enormous waste 
of force, waste not only in expenditure but in results. 
Kach kitchen has its Moloch in the cook-stove, before 
which " a passing train of hired girls" incessantly do 
homage. The coal that cooks for six could as well 
cook for sixty. The anguish of the family wash day, 
the weekly martyrdom of the housekeeper, has no 
more place under a civilized roof than the weaving of 
cloth or the salting and curing of meats. For the poor 
it is an even more wasteful system since they must buy 
in quantities so small that they pay double and treble 
the sum the article is worth. 

' ' We have no time for anything ! ' ' is the cry of all 
women, yet not one is willing to submit to the personal 
trouble and possible discomfort involved in a new ex- 
periment or to seek to work it out for the world, as it 
must be worked out. 

It is not in my opinion co-operation that is required 
since families are intended to live their own lives, a 
sufficiently difficult operation as it is. But combination 
in a business sense and with business methods could 
reconstruct the housekeeping of a community. It is 
time that this business of cooking and cleaning for 
humanity should be transferred to the hands of experts. 
The woman need have no lack of occupation, for she 
can find it in genuinely caring for her family, teaching 
and training as to-day she cannot. As to cooking, the 
kind which too many of us have been made to know 
is warranted to kill and not to cure. 

Given a perfectly managed, carefully administered 



244 Household Economics. 

kitchen and laundry for every block of houses in the 
city or town, and no matter on how simple a scale, it 
means not only more time for the higher aspects of liv- 
ing, but more money to spend in real things, giving, 
as we get it in our isolated, individual system, is organ- 
ized waste and destruction, and women who oppose or 
refuse to even listen to calm and rational discussion as 
to better possibilities, what are they but organized 
obstruction ? 

All this means time, and for the present we must do 
what we can. Naturally we face at once the question 
of education, relying upon that to undo all the evils 
brought about by lack of knowledge. But here again, 
education and mental training are wide apart, and this 
every true teacher knows. A child may pass through 
every grade of the public school yet emerge untaught 
and untrained for any real issue of real life. 

Do I want then that Household Economics should be 
part of all school and college training ? Never in the 
mere apprentice sense. The trade school and appren- 
tice idea, that of going through all the steps every day 
mechanically till the learner cannot help doing them 
right, hold the old thought of the work to be done. 
Science and the spirit of the age have taught new and 
better methods. The principles of all trades, i.e. the 
fundamental laws of matter and form, are taught in a 
few months with just enough practice to illustrate the 
principles. 

Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, known as chemist and one 
of the highest authorities in the country on all ques- 
tions of Household Economics, sums up the subject as 
compactly and briefly as it can be done. 

" First, the subject should be put into the college 
curriculum on a par with the other sciences, and as a 



Organised Living. ' 245 

summing up of all the science teaching of the course, 
for chemistry, physics, physiology, biology, and espe- 
cially bacteriology, are all only the stepping-stones to 
sanitary science. 

" Therefore, in the junior or senior year, after the stu- 
dent has a good groundwork of these sciences, there 
should be given a course of at least two lectures a week, 
and four hours of practical work. ' ' 

Such lectures as are suggested the present volume 
has covered as far as possible. The practical work to 
be done should include : 

" t. Visits to homes where the housekeeper has put in practice 
some or all of the theories of modern sanitary and economic 
living. 

"2. Visits of inspection accompanied by the instructor, to 
houses in process of construction, of good and bad types, both 
old and new. 

" 3. Conferences with successful and progressive house- 
keepers. 

" 4. Practical work and original investigation in the labor- 
atory of sanitary chemistry." 

Four reasons are given, a square so solid and com- 
prehensive that it may well serve as foundation for all 
future building. 

"First, and in an educational point of view foremost, to 
broaden the ideas of life with which the young woman leaves 
college, to bring her in touch with the great problems which 
press more closely each year. 

" Second, to secure a solid basis for improvement. Those of 
us who have had a hand in reforms know how much work is 
wasted for want of knowing what has been already done. 

' ' Third, to replace timidity by confidence. The young house- 
wife, who, knowing her own limitations, is afraid of her house 
and her servants, is likely to come to grief because of the ner- 
vous strain she must constantly bear, and I believe that the 
larger part of our domestic trials arise from the irritability and 



246 Household Ecojiomics. 

exactions of both parties, due to this electrical condition of the 
nervous atmosphere of the house. 

" Fourth, to secure the co-operation of trained womenin all sec- 
tions of the country; for all great reforms need many-sided help." 

This is the intermediate stage ; the stage that will 
train women to a power of judgment that will open the 
door for the larger handling of every question involved. 
It is not more flats, more boarding-houses, more clubs, 
more hotels that we require or that the future will see. 
Reaching from the limitation of the home, we have 
tried these all and know if we think at all that they are 
but compromise. The real thing is yet to come. 

There is a story of Asa Gray, one of our most dis- 
tinguished botanists, to whom a butterfly of unknown 
and undiscoverable species was sent who, after care- 
ful examination, wrote that its characteristics all indi- 
cated a habitat in which such and such plants would 
be found. In short that whether anybody knew or not 
it must have come from a certain portion of Brazil. In 
process of time, further investigation showed that it 
had come from precisely this region. The new thought 
of the home to come is in like fashion a stranger, yet 
analysis gives us its native dwelling-place no less than 
the certainty that it is a real creation. The ideal of 
one generation is the working factor of the next. The 
ideal is the only real. The timid conservative shrinks 
back in terror and declares that only destruction lies in 
the thought of any change. Yet not destruction but 
reconstruction is the thought. 

A stronger home ! That is what we want. That is 
what we must have. There are hundreds of homes 
where love is law and wisdom chief ruler, and the 
child that is born into them is sure of all that the high- 
est thought can secure for him in body, soul, and 



Organized Living. • 247 

spirit. But for the unnumbered thousands where love 
is not and wisdom has never entered ! — what shall we 
do with them ? 

Only a treatise on education could answer this ques- 
tion, but there is one thought for the home itself. As 
the body in which we live is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost, often defiled but none the less temple, so it is 
also true that the same power dwells with us in so 
literal a fashion that every stone and rafter, every table- 
spoon and paper scrap, bears stamp and signature to 
eyes that read aright : ' ' The house in which we live is 
a building of God, a house not made with hands." 

This is the stronger home, and in that home may 
and must be seen all graces and gentleness in thought 
and word that make the happy illumination which, on 
the inside of the house, corresponds to morning sun- 
light outside, falling on quiet dewy fields. Out of 
such homes neither knaves in politics nor tyrants and 
schemers in business strife and competition can ever 
come. With such homes, the golden age already 
dawning as the new century opens hastens its steps. 
The stronger home is here. 

And for the woman in that home ; — 

t( A woman, in so far as she beholdeth 

Her one Beloved's face ; 
A mother, — with a great heart that enfoldeth 

The children of the race ; 
A body free and strong, with that high beauty 

That comes of perfect use is built thereof; 
A mind where reason ruleth over duty, 

And Justice reigns with Love ; 
A self-poised, royal soul, brave, wise, and tender, 

No longer blind and dumb ; 
A human beiug of an unknown splendor, 

Is she who is to come." 



248 Household Economics. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND R^FKR^NCES. 

Alan and Woman, by Havelock Ellis. 

The Evolution of Marriage, by C. H. Letourneau. 

Co-operation, by Mrs. C. L. Pierce. 

England} 's Ideal and Other Papers on Social Subjects, by Edward 

Carpenter ; Essay on " Simplification of Living." 
Civilization, its Cause and Cure, by Edward Carpenter (Chapter 

on " Custom.") 
The Emancipation of the Family, by Mona Caird. 
Woman under Monasticism, by Lena Eckstein. 
Marriage, by Edward Carpenter. 
" The New Woman and her Duties," by Clare de Grafenried, 

Popular Science Monthly, September, 1896. 
Chemistry of Wheat Flour and Bread, and Technology of 

Bread Making, by Wm. Jago. 
Chemistry and Economy of Food, by W. O. Atwater, U. S. 

Dep't of Agriculture, Bulletin 21, 1895. 
Food. Manuals of Health, by Albert J. Bernays. 
Food and its Functions, by James Knight. 
Fifty Soups, Salads, Breakfast Dainties, by Thomas J. Murray. 




APPENDIX. 



SO great is the demand for a simple and practical course of 
Club work in Household Economics, that it seems wise 
to add to the present volume, two programmes which 
have been tested in the clubs for which they were prepared. 
Dr. Mary Green is a well-known physician, whose book on the 
Foods of the World is given in the bibliography of the present 
volume, and Mrs. Watson is valued authority in the National 
Household Economic Association. The syllabus of the course 
of lectures by Professor Allen, of Armour Institute, has also 
been used by leaders of sections for study in these directions, 
who have chosen the points appealing most strongly to their 
special needs. 

In addition to these, is given the prospectus and constitution 
of the Chicago Household Economic Society, prepared by 
Mrs. Stetson and myself, and compressing into small space, the 
need and purpose of the work inaugurated by the National As- 
sociation, under the leadership of Mrs. I, aura Wilkinson, its 
president till 1896, when her place was filled by Mrs. Elizabeth 
Boynton Harbert. The Association has branches at many 
points, the most notable work being done in Philadelphia and 
Syracuse, though Boston leads in the matter of dietaries for 
schools, and the furnishing of carefully-prepared lunches for 
their pupils, the leader and authority at all points being Mrs. 
Ellen H. Richards of the Boston Institute of Technology. 

A summary of the work of Clubs has been made by Mrs. 
Estelle M. H. Merrill, in an article in the American Kitchen 
Magazine as follows : 

The Chicago Woman's Club has organized a study class in 
domestic science, and done a year's work to be continued in 

249 



250 Appendix, 

1897. The well known energy and ability which has always 
characterized the admirable work done by this famous club 
makes one hope great things from this class. 

The Peoria Woman's Club has had, during the past season, but 
one paper on a domestic science topic, but that was a fine one by 
Mrs. Alice Peloubet Norton of Newton on " Scientific Cooking." 
The spirited discussion following the essay showed much inter- 
est on the part of the club members. 

The Worcester (Mass.) Woman's Club also reports one lecture 
for the past season : as does the Thought and Work Club of 
Salem (Mass.), which last hopes however to have a class in do- 
mestic science next season. 

The Woburn (Mass.) Woman's Club was divided during the 
past year into seven sections or departments, one of which is 
devoted to household economics. In February the club had 
the pleasure of listening to one of Dr. Mary E. Green's valua- 
ble lectures, her topics being " Butter, Milk, and Cheese." 

The Secretary of the Wellesley Hills (Mass.) Woman's Club 
writes: "The work done by us under the head of domestic 
science has been small, simply preparatory to more extensive 
work next year we hope. A cooking class was formed, and 
most successfully conducted by Miss Charlotte Wills, assistant 
teacher of the Boston Cooking School. The course consisted 
of eight demonstration lessons, which were both profitable and 
enjoyable, and the enthusiasm shown leads us to anticipate a 
more active future." 

The work accomplished by the Springfield (Mass.) Woman's 
Club in introducing cooking into the public schools is described 
elsewhere in this issue of the magazine. 

Although the Elgin (Ills.) Woman's Club is devoting all its 
energies at present to building a new hospital, yet it reports much 
good work done recently in the field of domestic science, includ- 
ing a course of lessons in cookery ; courses in cooking, domes- 
tic science and sewing in the Elgin Academy ; and a cook-book 
gotten up by the home committee of the club. On the " Home " 
days of the club for the past year, the topics discussed were 
" Our Pet Economies" and "The Highest Requisites of Hospi- 
tality." Among the topics discussed in previous seasons were, 
" Home Amusements," " The Domestic Question," " Co-opera- 



Appendix, • 251 



tive Kitchens," "Science versus Servants," " Effects of Club 
Life on the Home," etc. These are given here because titles or 
topics are often so suggestive to other minds. 

The St. Johnsbury (Vt.) Woman's Club devoted one day early 
last fall to domestic science. Three essays were given by club 
members on "The Evolution of the Kitchen," " Co-operative 
Housekeeping " and " House Sanitation." 

The Alden Club of Franklin (Mass.), on its domestic science 
day, discussed the work of the National Household Economic 
Association, the New England Kitchen (the food laboratory, 
not the magazine), and Cooking Schools. 

The New Century Club of Wilmington (Delaware) reports 
only a class in dressmaking, taught by Miss Alice E. Jastrow of 
Drexel Institute. 

Cleveland Sorosis has standing committees on "Home Mak- 
ing as a Profession," and " Decoration and Architecture of 
House and Home." Mrs. Martha P. Rose, the present secre- 
tary and former president of the club writes : " Our president 
alway emphasizes'the fact that home making is an art or science 
as great as any profession, and should be honored by the public 
in like manner." Mrs. Rose modestly refrains from quoting 
her own annual address, as president, when she spoke of this 
"Home Making a Profession" department, showing that 
drunkenness could be prevented in many cases if the cooking 
was hygienic and the children were properly cared for. " We 
need for mothers strong and well-balanced minds. Let us 
make the art of house and home keeping a profession to be 
learned, and when acquired, let it receive the homage and defer- 
ence given to the profession of law or medicine." 

A very suggestive letter comes from St. Louis. The writer, 
Mrs. Mattie E. Fischell, says: "We started last year, in our 
Wednesday Club, an organization known as the v Emergency 
Aid,' to do active philanthropic work. The membership in 
this is largely composed of the club members, but is not limited 
to that, so we are a distinct organization. This Emergency 
Aid, in order to further its new plans, has recently started a 
public kitchen, modelled after the New England Kitchen, but 
called by us the ' Rumford Kitchen.' We are now about to 
organize a branch of the National Household Economic Asso- 



252 Appetidix. 



ciation, which will start with a nucleus of the club members, 
and then enlist others. There have been no lectures on domes- 
tic work or science before the club during the past year, but 
our science section devoted some time to household sanitation, 
and kindred subjects, last year." 

The Watertown (Mass.) 'Woman's Club is very young yet, 
but has begun in the right way. On one of their afternoons 
during the past year, three members gave very instructive ac- 
counts of experiences in keeping house in foreign lands, — Bug- 
land, France, and China. 

The Cantabrigia Club, of Cambridge, Mass., has a splendid 
record in domestic science. Their " Domestic Science Exhibit " 
of last season is still talked of; and the home department of 
the present year arranged a very notable course of lectures, 
scientific and demonstrative combined, given by famous experts. 
The club had a lecture from Dr. Mary B. Green, also, during 
her February visit to Boston. 

The president of the Colonia Club, of Brooklyn, N. Y., writes : 

"We have a home committee, and under its conduct we 
had an instructive meeting last February, with papers on 
the ' Water Supply of New York City and Brooklyn,' and a 
communication, from a ' guest-member ' in California, on the 
water supply of the southern part of that state. 

" We had also a paper entitled ' Contents of a Boiler.' This 
was given by request of a member who knew of a physician 
who gave patients water drawn through the hot-water pipes 
from an ordinary copper boiler. The query was, ' Is such water 
wholesome ? ' " 

Perhaps the most interesting of all the interesting missives 
received in reply to our letter of inquiry, came from the corre- 
sponding secretary of the Lansing (Mich.) Woman's Club. She 
writes : 

" The club was organized in 1874 and incorporated in 1889. 
In that year we built a home for our use. We have in- 
dulged in few lectures on any subject, yet we have not neglected 
household matters, it having been our general aim to devote 
one-half of each weekly session to practical matters. 

" In February of the present year, we had an essay, the title 
of which was ' Cookery : the destiny of nations depends on the 



Appendix. 253 

way tliey are fed.' Not having any reliable data on hand relat- 
ing to that subject, the writer substituted an account of the 
Chicago experiment in feeding students. We also had a very 
good paper on the Atkinson oven ; our practical women joined 
the essayist in approval of this oven, but deprecated the idea 
of using kerosene oil in washing dishes ! The Rumford Kitchen, 
too, had its review. We were later entertained with a pleasant 
talk from Dr. Mary E. Green, of Charlotte, Mich., in behalf 
of the National Household Economic Association. 

''Our programme for the next year, beginning the first of 
October, '95, will probably contain more on the subject of 
household economy than it has hitherto done. It is now in the 
hands of the committee." 

If one looks over these reports with an eye to the localities 
represented and the types of clubs taking up this work, it will 
be seen that most is done in the Western clubs, and in the young 
progressive clubs of the Bast. The older clubs have, for the 
most part, remained as they began — literary clubs. Thus the 
New Bngland Woman's Club does no work of this sort at all ; 
andSorosis, thorfgh having a " House and Home'' day, devotes 
it usually to some abstract or theoretical matter, rather than to 
practical work. The Southern clubs also, with the exception 
of the Woman's Club of New Orleans, and the interesting new 
Arundel Club of Baltimore, are mostly literary clubs only. 
The Arundel, under the expert leadership of the well-known 
Mrs. Mary Hinman Abel, is doing admirable work. 



A COURSB IN HOUSEHOLD SCIENCE. 

BY DR. MARY E. GREEN. 

" Home-keeping hearts are happiest." 

September 8. 

1 The building of the home. 

2 From cellar to attic. 

3 The use and abuse of ornamentation. 

4 Home-keeping vs. house-keeping. 



254 Appendix, 

Heat and air fashion both mind and body. — ArbuThnoT. 
September 22. 

1 Physiological effects of light and heat. 

2 Different methods of heating the home. 

3 Sunshine, the light and life giver. 

4 Ventilation and plumbing. 

A true cook, be it remembered, is an artist.— Theodore Chii,d. 
October 6. 

1 The chemistry of cookery. 

2 Hygienic values of different methods of cooking. 

3 How may our modern methods be improved ? 

4 How to select and purchase food. 

No digest of taw *s like the law of digestion. — MOORE. 
October 20. 

1 Nutritive value and digestibility of food. 

2 The advantages and disadvantages of a meat diet. 

3 Demonstration — how to select meat. 

4 Food value of starches, sugars, and fats. 

5 Soups and soup-making. 

Beware of such food as persuades a man, though he be not 
hungry, to eat. — Socrates. 
November 3. 

1 Nutritive value of fish. 

2 Oysters and oyster culture. 

3 Turtle, shell-fish, and mollusks. 

4 The work of the Department of Fisheries (Colum- 

bian Exposition). 

O green and glorious / O herbaceous treat ! 
' T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat. — Sydney Smith. 
November 17. 

1 The hygienic value of vegetables. 

2 The proper cooking of vegetables, cereals and 

legumes. 

3 The rationale of vegetarianism. 

4 The Aladdin oven. 



Appendix. 255 

Blest epicures from every climate pour their gustful praise. 
— Wm. Honk. 

December 1. 

1 Milk as a food. 

2 Butter. 

3 Butterine. 

4 Suet, lard, and their compounds. 

A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only 
one eye. — Brii^at Savarin. 

December 15. 

1 Cheese, the universal food. 

2 Eggs — their food value and proper cooking. 

3 The chafing-dish — practical demonstration. 

4 The essentials of a modern cook-book. 

But happy they, thrice happy, who possess 

The art to mix these sweets with due address. 

— Wm. Honk. 

December 29. 

1 Maple sugar. 

2 Palm sugar, sorghum, and honey. 

3 The sugar-beet industry. 

4 Jellies and marmalades. 

" Better is oaten bread to-day than cakes to-morrow." 
January 12. 

1 Flour and other prepared cereals. 

2 Bread the staff of life. 

3 Bread of different nations. 

4 The chemistry of bread-making. 

5 Macaroni and pastes. 

Bear me, Pomona, to thy citron groves. — Thomson. 
January 25. 

1 Food value of nuts. 

2 Fruits as food and medicine. 

3 The fruitarian theory. 

4 Healthful desserts. 



256 Appeiidix. 

O, what a thing is man devoid of 'grace, 
Adoring garlic with a humble face ! — Herbert. 

February 9. 

1 The aromatic herbs. 

2 The spices of the Orient. 

3 Sauces, flavors and cordials. 

4 Chillis and pickles. 

Coffee, which makes the politician wise 

And see through all things with his half-shut eyes. — Pope). 

February 23. 

1 Coffee, its history and usage. 

2 Tea. 

3 Chocolate and cocoa. 

4 Mate. 

" Yes, water shall have every due praise of mine , 
Whether salt, like the ocean, or fresh like the Rhine." 

March 9. 

1 Water. 

2 Pure water vs. disease. 

3 Water as a cleansing agent. 

4 Ice and our ice supply. 

Plain food is quite enough for me.— O. W. Hoi<MES. 
March 23. 

1 Food of civilized Europe and America. 

2 Food of the Eskimos, I/aps, and Alaska Indians. 

3 Food of the Asiatic peoples. 

4 Food of the natives of the tropics. 

Nothing surely is so disgraceful to society as unmeaning 
wastefulness. — Count Rumford. 

April 6. 

1 Economy in the use of food. 

2 Adulteration of food. 

3 The theory of co-operative housekeeping. 

4 Household science in the public schools. 



Appendix, . 257 

" These trifles lead to serious mischief." 
April 20. 

1 Chemical effect of bacteria upon food. 

2 Nature and growth of bacteria. 

3 Bacteria as factors in disease. 

4 The sterilization of food. 

" Mens sana in corpore sano." 
May 4. 

1 The life and work of Count Rumford. 

2 House-keeping in the twentieth century. 

3 The science of physical culture. 

4 Health and dress reform. 



A SEASON'S WORK. 

Outline of study to use in Women's Clubs prepared for the National 
Household Economic Association . 

BY MRS. KATE H. WATSON. 

SEPTEMBER. 

Marketing. — Use of fall fruits, jelly-making, canning, and 
pickling. 

Nutritious food for children. Simple meals beautifully served. 
Foods eaten to nourish the body and repair the waste, not to 
"fill up." 

Nutritive value of food products. 

The selection and preparation of food. 

Value of some cheap food materials : I^egumes, corn-meal, 
macaroni, rice, etc. 

Why do we cook ? Fancy versus plain cooking. Use of fats, 
animal and vegetable. 

The five " food principles " ; value of each. 

OCTOBER. 

Science in the Home. — The influence of home on society and 
state. 
Art and utility in the home. Ornamentation. 
17 



258 Appendix. 

The kitchen : Light, heat, and ventilation, size and arrange- 
ments. Ranges, Aladdin oven, and chafing-dish. Utensils and 
their care. 

Dining-room : Table ornamentations, china, silver, and glass- 
ware. 

Bedroom, guest-chamber, conveniences and care of each. 

Bathroom and closets. 



NOVEMBER. 

Suggestions for Thanksgiving. — Marketing and table deco- 
ration for Thanksgiving Day. 

Selection, care, and preparation of meat, poultry, and fish, 
with the nutritive value of each. 

Care of food in winter. Foods that can be kept on hand in 
cold weather. Value to the housewife of canned and dried 
meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables. 

Value of nuts and grains. Waste and economy in the home. 
Waste of time and strength. 

DECEMBER. 

The Christmas Time.— Gift-making and gift-giving. 
A plea for the truly beautiful and useful in the home. 
Home development as an agency of social and moral progress. 
Food for invalids. The invalid's room. 
The food we eat and the " food we breathe." 
Good cooking as a civilizing factor and moral agent. 
Demoralizing and devitalizing tendency of impure and badly 
cooked food. 

JANUARY. 

Laundry. — Conveniences. Soap, starch, and blueing : the 
use and abuse of each. 

Washing and care of house linen. 
Underwear: Knitted or woven, silk, lisle, and cotton. 
Embroideries, white and colored. Silks and fine cottons. 
Washing of fine woollens, blankets, and bedding. 



Appendix. . 259 

FEBRUARY. 

Question of Dress. — Textiles. Relative value of materials. 

Dress as an object of industrial art. 

Relations of clothes to human life. 

Utility and beauty in dress. Economy and extravagance in 
dress. 

Dress in its relation to beauty, health, comfort, and morality. 
The trinity : construction, ornamentation, and color. 

Selecting and care of clothes. L,aw of fold centres. 

Underwear, stockings, shoes, millinery. Sewing : Its relation 
to other arts. Utilizing materials at hand. 

MARCH. 

During the Interregnum. — Preparing summer work. Mak- 
ing, and making-over gowns and summer clothing. 

Buying and making house linen and bedding. Marking and 
care of each. Pressing and cleaning. 

The annual cleaning. The art of scrubbing. Scientific clean- 
ing. Any woman can (not) clean, but it takes a nice woman to 
keep clean. Personal cleanliness. 

APRIL. 

Art Outside of the Home. — The backyard and "shed." 
Cleanliness of the yard and surroundings of the home. A plea 
for plants and vines. 

Air, light, and sunshine in the home, the best disinfectants. 

Care of garbage and waste. 

MAY. 

The Science of Cooking. — Care of food in warm weather. 
Transmission of disease by food. 
Summer beverages. Water and ice. 
Value of salads as a summer food. Salad dressing. 
Milk and its products. 
Summer jelly-making. 

Care and preparation of vegetables and small fruits. 
A plea for the market man. Care of food supplies in the mar- 
ket and grocery. 



260 Appendix. 

Till} CHEMISTRY OF FOODS. 



Syllabus of a Course of Eight Lecture-Studies. 

hY THOMAS GRANT ALLEN, m.a., Associate Professor of Chemistry, Armour 
Institute, Chicago. 



I. General Introduction. 

A. Change. 

r. Chemical change. Ex., souring of milk. 

2. Physical change. Ex,, melting of butter. 

3. Chemistry deals principally with changes. 

4. Affinity the cause of chemical change. 

5. The physical forces, heat light, electricity, vital force, etc., 
are the agents which initiate or modify chemical change. 
Ex., yeast and dough ; fading colors. 

B. Composition of substances. 

1. Substances mixed and substances combined. Ex., char- 
coal and water, and sugar. 

2. Compounds and elements. 
a Some elements. 

(1) Oxygen. 1-5 of the atmosphere, t-2 of the earth's 
crust, 8-9 of water, 3-5 of the body. Properties and 
uses — supports combustion and respiration. 

(2) Hydrogen. 1-9 of water, I -io of the body. Forms 
a considerable proportion of all animal and vegetable 
substances. Properties and uses. 

(3) Nitrogen. 4-5 of the air, contained in all animal 
and vegetable substances. Properties and uses. 

(4) Carbon, r-5 of the body, contained in all living 
things. Properties and uses. 

b Some compounds. 

(1) Water. Composed of hydrogen and oxygen. Prop- 
erties and uses. 

(2) Carbon dioxide. A compound of oxygen. Formed 
by a combustion and respiration. One of the final 
products of decomposition of animal and vegetable 
substances. 



Appendix. . 261 

C. Classification of chemical compounds. 

1. Acids, /. <?., sour substances. Ex., vinegar. 

2. Bases, i. e. y substances which destroy the sour taste of 
acids. Ex., ammonia, 

3. vSalts, i. e.y substances formed by the union of acids and 
bases. 

D. Oxidation. 
E- Reduction. 

II. Uses of Food and Classification of Food Principles. 

A. Uses of food in the body. 

1. The body needs food : 

a To build up and develop its tissues. 

b To repair the waste. 

c To produce heat and energy. 

2. How these results are attained by the consumption of food. 
a Food is converted into blood and lymph, which bathes 

the cellular elements of the tissues. The cells assimilate 
the food thus furnished them, grow and multiply, thus 
increasing the volume of the tissue in the young and 
repairing the structure in the adult. 

b Food produces heat by being oxidized, or burned up in 
the body. 

c Food produces energy by building up muscle. 

3. Advantage of variety in food. 

4. Importance of cooking food. 

a Renders it more palatable and digestible. 
b Destroys the germs of disease. 

B. Classification of food principles. 

1. Incombustibles. 
a Water. 

b Mineral matters. 

2. Combustibles. 

a Heat producers. 

(1) Hydrocarbons : — Fats and oils. 

(2) Carbohydrates : — starch and sugar. 
b Flesh and energy producers : proteids. 

3. Food adjuncts. 
a Beverages. 

b Condiments. 



262 Appendix, 

III. The Chemistry of the Human Body. 

A. Composition of the body. 

1. The ultimate constituents comprise some 15 or 16 ele- 
ments. These exist in about the following amounts for a 
man weighing 148 lbs. 

Oxygen .92.4 lbs. Calcium 2.80 lbs. 



Hydrogen 14.6 

Nitrogen 4.6 

Chlorine 0.12 

Fluorine 0.02 

Carbon 33-3° 

Phosphorus 1.40 

Sulphur 0.24 



Potassium 0.34 " 

Sodium 0.12 " 

Magnesium 0.04 " 

Iron 0.02 " 

Manganese ~) 

Lithium > Traces 

Silicon J 



The proximate constituents. The simpler ones, such as 
sodium chloride and urea, are crystalline, while the com- 
plex ones, as albumen and gelatin, are amorphous. 

The crystalloids pass out of the body ; the colloids re- 
main and form tissue. 

The chemical compounds in the human body. 
a Inorganic compounds. 

(1) Water ; between 60 per cent, and 70 per cent, of the 
whole body. 

(2) Acids : hydrochloric, lactic, etc. 

(3) Salts : phosphates of lime, sodium and potassium, 
necessary for bone formation. Sodium chloride necessary 
for cell activity. 

b Organic crystalline bodies are the result of disintegration 

of the albuminous material. 

c Hydrocarbons, or fats, include : 

(1) Stearin. 

(2) Palmitin. 

(3) Olein. 

d Albuminous bodies comprise : 

(1) Albumins. 

(2) Globulins. 

(3) Fibrin. 

(4) Peptones. 



Appendix. % 263 

e Albuminoid or gelatinous bodies : 

(1) Mucin. 

(2) Gelatin. 

(3) Chondrin. 

(4) Elastin. 
f Ferments. 

(1) Organized. Yeast, bacteria. 

(2) Unorganized. Pepsin, diastase, etc. 
B. The chemistry of digestion. 

1. Object of digestion. 

2. Digestion in the mouth. 
a Composition of saliva. 
b Functions. 

(1) Moistens food. 

(2) Ministers to sense of taste. 

(3) Liquefies starch and converts it into sugar or dextrin. 
Evil results to infants and dyspeptics from use of starchy 
foods. 

3. Digestion in the stomach. 

a Composition of the gastric juice. 
b Its functions. 

(1) Converts albumins into peptones. 

(2) Curdles milk, precipitating casein. 

(3) Emulsifies fats. 

4. Digestion in the intestine. 
a Uses of bile. 

b Uses of pancreatic juice. 
c Uses of intestinal juice. 

5. Passage of digested food into the blood. 

6. Necessity for a mixed diet. 

7. Effect of cooking on digestibility. 

IV. Incombustibles. 

A. Water. 

1. Natural waters. Potable waters. 

2. Impurities in water. Methods of detection. Purification. 

3. Hard waters. Softening of water. 

4. Use of water in the body. 
a To keep the skin moist. 



264 Appendix. 

b To furnish a medium for excretion of solids. 
c To aid digestion and absorption. 
d To aid in chemical change. 
5. Cooking of water. 
B. Mineral matters. 

1. Source. 

2. Use in the body. 

V. Combustibles. 

A. Heat-producers. 

1. Hydrocarbons, i.e., fats and oils. 
a Chemical composition. 

b The chemical changes they undergo in the body. 

c Animal oils, butter, lard, butterine. 

d Vegetable oils. Ex., cottolene, palm oil. 

e Food value : not flesh-formers, but good heat-givers. 

2. Carbohydrates. 

a The grape-sugar group. 

(1) Grape sugar. 

(2) Fruit sugar. 

(3) Galactose. 

(4) Inosite. 

b The cane-sugar group. 
(1) Cane sugar. 



(2) 


Milk sugar. 




(3) 


Malt sugar. 




i 


Cooking of sugar. 




ii 


Food value. 




iii 


Maple sugar. 




iv 


Saccharine. 




c The starch group. 




(1) 


Starch. 




(2) 


Dextrin. 




(3) 


Glycogen. 




i 


Structure of starch 


grains. 


ii 


Food value. 




Starcl 


1 is not a flesh former, as 


nitrogen. 





it does not contain 



Appendix. t 265 

Starch is burned in the body to produce heat. It gives 
less heat than fats and oils, but gives it more quickly, 
iii Cooking of starch. Ex., Toast, thickening of gravies, 
sauces, etc. 
B. The flesh-formers or force-producers. 
a Proteids. Chemical composition. 

Classification. Changes which they undergo in the body. 
Examples. 
b. Albuminoids. Chemical composition. 
Classification. Examples. 
Uses and value of the proteids and albuminoids ; not only 

flesh-formers and force-producers, but heat-givers. 
Gelatin. Source and extraction. Uses as a food. 



VI. Vegetable Foods. 

General characters : 

A. Cereals. 

Wheat. Rye. Barley. 

Oats. Rice. Maize. 

1. Composition. 

2. Chemistry of bread and bread-making. Dough. Fer- 

mented and unfermented bread. 

Baking-powders : their composition, uses, and adultera- 
tions. 

Cooking — Softens the cellulose, breaks the starch, softens 
the gluten. 

New and stale bread. 

3. Food value. 

B. I^egumes or pulse. 

Peas. Beans. 

1. Composition. 

2. Value as foods. 

C. Farinaceous Foods. 

Sago. Tapioca. 

Arrowroot. Corn-flour. 

1. Composition. 

2. Value. 



266 Appendix. 

D. Tubers and roots. 

1. Composition. 

2. Value. 
B. Fruits. 

i. Composition. 

Salts. Acids. Pectin. 

2. Value as foods. 
F. Green vegetables. 
i. Composition. 
2. Value as foods. 

VII. Animal Foods. 

General characters : 

A. Milk. 

1. Composition. 

2. Adulteration. 

3. Preservation. 

4. Preparations : Koumiss, Condensed Milk, Cheese. 

5. Cooking. 

B. Eggs. 

1. Composition. 

2. Preservation. 

3. Cooking. 

C. Flesh. 

General characters : 

Beef. Pork. Veal. Fowl. Fish. 

1. Composition. 

2. Preparations : Soup, Broth, Extract. 

3. Cooking. 

4. Preservation. 

VIII. Food Adjuncts. 

A. Beverages. 
1. Tea. 
a Preparation. 
b Composition. 

c Stimulating principle. Theine. Bitter principle. Tan- 
nin. 



Appendix. . 267 

d Flavor. An essential oil. 

e Adulteration. 

f Cooking. 

g Effect on body. 

2. Coffee. 

a Preparation. 
h Composition, 
c Adulteration. 
d Cooking. 

3. Cocoa. 

4. Alcohol. 
B. Condiments. 

Salt. Pepper. Vinegar. Spices. 

The books which will be especially helpful in this course 
are : 
Inorganic Chemistry (Remsen). 
Human Physiology (Landois and Sterling). 
The Science of Nutrition (Atkinson). 
The Chemistry of Foods (Bell). 
Foods and Beverages (Beal). 
Foods (Blythe). 

Food : Its Source, Origin and Composition (Church). 
The Science of Food (Cole). 
Gelatin (Davidowsky). 
Starch, Glucose and Sugar (Frankei). 
Food (Hassall). 

Food Adulteration and its Detectio?i (Battershall). 
Bacteriology (Fraenkel). 

Butter: Its Analysis and Adulteration (Hehner and Angell). 
Chemistry of Common Life (Johnson). 
The Chemistry of Life arid Health (Kimmins). 
Chemistry of Bread, Wheat and Flour ( Jago). 
Studies in Fermentation (Pasteur). 
Hygiene (Rohe). 

Food and Feeding (Thompson, Sir H.) 
Chemistry of Cooking (Richards, Mrs.). 
Food in Health and Disease (Yeo). 
Chemistry of Cooking (Williams). 



268 Appendix, 

NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION. 

GFNFRAI, OFFICERS. 

Honorary President, Mrs. Potter Palmer, ioo Lake Shore Drive. 
Vice-President-at-large, Mrs. Charles Henrotin, 376 Ontario St. 
Acting President, Mrs. E. B. Harbert, Evanston, 111. 
Vice-President for Illinois, Mrs. Robert H. Wiles, Freeport. 
Recording Secretary, Mrs. Anna B. McMahan, 4577 Oaken- 

wald Ave. 
Corresponding Secretary, Mrs. Alice J. Whitney, 453 Belden 

Ave. 
Treasurer, Mrs. Frances B. Owens, 6241 Sheridan Ave. 

STATF VICF-PRFSIDFNTS. 

Massachusetts, Mrs. Minerva B. Tobey, 19 W. Cedar St., Boston. 

New Hampshire, Mrs. Lillian Streeter, Concord. 

Connecticut, Mrs. V. B. Keeler, New Haven. 

New York, Mrs. Helen H. Backus, 57 Livingston St., Brooklyn. 

Maryland, Mrs. John J. Abel, 1604 Bolton St., Baltimore. 

Virginia, Mrs. Ann Green, Culpepper. 

Pennsylvania, Mrs. John Converse, Rosemont, Philadelphia. 

Alabama, Mrs. Priscilla Goodwin, Robinson Springs. 

Louisiana, Miss Catherine Minor, Kouma. 

Kansas, Mrs. C. F. Wilder, Manhattan. 

Utah, Mrs. Susau Young Gates, Provo. 

Oregon, Mrs. B. W. Allen, Portland. 

California, not yet decided. 

Iowa, Mrs. Virginia J. Berryhill, ion Pleasant St., Des Moines. 

Michigan, Dr. Mary B. Green, Charlotte. 

Ohio, Miss Ottilie H. Krebs, Forest Ave., Avondale, Cincinnati. 

Illinois, duties performed by Acting President. 

Minnesota, not yet decided. 

Indiana, not yet decided. 

Kentucky, Mrs. Virginia M. Lewis, 1801 4th Ave., Louisville. 

Missouri, Mrs. C. B. Stirling, 20 Westmoreland PI., St. Louis. 

Nebraska, Mrs. Harriet S. McMurphy. 

Wisconsin, not yet decided. 



Appendix. , 269 

Colorado, Mrs. Lyl M. Statisbury, Denver. 
Maine, Mrs. Sarah Fairfield Hamilton, Saco. 
New Jersey, Mrs, Louise Downs Quigley, Orange. 

BOARD OE DIRECTORS. 

Term expiring in 1895. — Mrs. Ellen R. Mendenhall, 1804 
Green St., Philadelphia. Mrs. Frances B. Owens, 6241 Sheridan 
Ave. Mrs. Susan Look Avery, Anchorage, Ky. Mrs. Mary 
Hinman Abel, 1604 Bolton St., Baltimore. 

Term expiring in 1896. — Mrs Ellen] B. Dietrick, 20 Lowell 
St., Cambridge, Mass. Mrs. Sarah F. Gaue, 425 La Salle Ave. 
Mrs. Kate H. Watson, 319 S. Robey St. Mrs. Ella Hill, 3910 
Langley Ave. 

Term expiring in 1897. — Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, 376 Ontario 
St Mrs. Lavinia Hargis, 660 La Salle Ave. Mrs. Phoebe 
Butler, 116 Wisconsin St., Oak Park. Mrs. Gertrude Eastman 
(resigned), Los Angeles, California. 

Term Expiring in 1898. — Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, 
Evanston, 111. Mrs. Mary McKittrick, Locust St., St. Louis. 
Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer, 387 Broadway, Providence, R. I. 
Mrs. Laura S. Wilkinson, 482 La Salle Ave. 

CHAIRMAN OE STANDING COMMITTEES. 

1. Sanitary Condition of the Home, Mrs. Minerva B. Tobey, 19 

W. Cedar St., Boston. 

2. Cooking Schools, Mrs. Olive Cotton, Athenaeum Bldg. 

3. Food Supply, Mrs. Kate H. Watson, 319 S. Robey St. 

4. Housekeepers' Clubs, Mrs. Mary Coleman Stuckert, Audito- 

rium Bldg. 

5. Sewing, Mrs. Adele Strawbridge, 683 W. Adams St. 

6. Press, in charge of Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick, Cambridge, 

Mass., Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Stetson, San Francisco, 
Cal., Mrs. Helen H. Backus, Brooklyn, N. Y., Mrs. Vir- 
ginia D. Young, Fairfax, S. C, Mrs. Maria S. Orwig, Chi- 
cago, 111. 



2 70 Appendix. 

THE NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC 
ASSOCIATION. 

Incorporated March 16, 1893. 

The following articles of incorporation and by-laws of The 
National Household Economic Association were adopted March 
22, 1393, and went into effect at the annual meeting, October 11, 
1893. The Association voted to drop the word " Columbian " at 
the meeting held in April, 1894. 

I. The name of the Association shall be " The National House- 
hold Economic Association." 

II. The object of this Association shall be : — 1. to awaken 
the public mind to the importance of establishing Bureaus of 
Information where there can be an exchange of wants and needs 
between employer and employed, in every department of home 
and social life. 2. To promote among members of the Associ- 
ation a more scientific knowledge of the economic value of vari- 
ous foods and fuels ; a more intelligent understanding of correct 
plumbing and drainage in our homes, as well as need for pure 
water and good light in a sanitarily built house. 3. To secure 
skilled labor in every department in our homes, and to organ- 
ize Schools of Household Science and Service. 

UST OF DIRECTORS FOR FIRST YEAR. 

Mrs. Laura S. Wilkinson, Mrs. Sarah F. Gane, Mrs. Isadore 
P. Taylor, Mrs. Frances E. Owens, Mrs. Ellen M. Henrotin, 
Mrs. Lavinia Hargis, Mrs. Phcebe Butler, Mrs. J. M. Hill, Mrs. 
Elizabeth B. Harbert, Mrs. L. M. Mendenhall, Mrs. Mary H. 
Abel, Mrs. Susan Look Avery, Mrs. Kate Watson, Mrs. Mary 
W. McKittrick, Mrs. H. T. Eastman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle 
Dietrick. 

by-laws. 

I. The management of this Association for the first } T ear shall 
be vested in a board of sixteen directors, named in the articles 
of incorporation. The directors shall divide themselves by lot 
into four classes of four each, whose terms of office shall expire 



Appendix. . 271 

respectively at the end of one, two, three, and four years, and 
vacancies occurring shall be filled by a vote of the Association. 

II. The officers of this Association shall be : an Honorary 
President and Acting President, a Vice-President, a Vice-Presi- 
dent-at-large, a Recording Secretary, a Corresponding Secretary, 
and a Treasurer. There shall also be a Vice-President for each 
State and a Chairman for each county of each State, the officers 
to be elected at annual meetings. 

III. The duties of the Honorary President shall be to preside 
at the annual meeting and to consult and advise with the 
Board of Directors. 

IV. The Acting President and Vice-President shall perform 
all the duties incident to such offices. 

V. The Vice-Presidents shall supervise the work in their 
respective States, and report at the annual and semi-annual 
meetings. They shall organize such work as they deem appro- 
priate to the needs of their States, providing they work in har- 
mony with the Articles of Incorporation. 

VI. The Recording Secretary shall keep a record of all the 
meetings and send to all the absent members reports of same. 

VII. The Corresponding Secretary shall attend to all the cor- 
respondence and issue calls for the various meetings, and notify 
the Vice-President two weeks 'before the annual and semi- 
annual meeting, and make such reports as the President may 
recommend. 

VIII. The Treasurer shall have charge of all the funds of the 
Association, and shall keep an exact account of all receipts and 
disbursements, and shall only pay such bills as have been 
approved by the Finance Committee. She shall be required to 
report at each annual and semi-annual meeting, and at such 
other times as the President shall require. 

IX. The Finance Committee shall pass on all bills, audit the 
accounts of the Treasurer, and report to the Association at each 
annual meeting, and also at the semi-annual meeting of the 
Board of Directors. 

X. The Chairman of each of the various counties shall arrange 
and provide for Household Economic Clubs in her county, and 
shall report to her Vice-President two weeks before the annual 
and semi-annual meetings. 



272 Appendix. 

XL The annual meeting of the Association shall be held on 
the last Wednesday of October, and this shall be the beginning 
of the fiscal year. After this meeting it shall be the duty of the 
Board of Directors present to elect three of its members who 
shall constitute the Financial Committee for the coming year. 
A semi-annual meeting of the Board of Directors shall be held 
on the second Wednesday of April, when reports shall be read 
from the different States, the place selected for the next annual 
meeting, and all other business transacted, which may come 
before the Association. There shall also be held monthly 
meetings in each State branch of the Association. 

XII. Special meetings of the Association may be called by 
the President, Vice-President, or any three members of the 
Board, the object of the meeting being stated on the call for the 
meeting. 

XIII. There shall also be the following standing committees : 

1. Committee on Sanitary Condition of the Home, correct 
Plumbing and Ventilation, Light, Heat, etc. The duties of 
this committee shall be to establish Home Science Clubs and 
to make a study of Sanitary Science. 

2. Committee on Cooking Schools, Industrial Schools, 
Housekeepers' Emergency Bureau, Co-operative Laundries, 
Co-operative Bakeries, Training School for Servants, Kitchen 
Gardens and Public Kindergartens, Diet Kitchens, Mothers' 
and Nurse Girls' Classes, and Training School for Nurses. The 
duties of this committee shall be to keep itself informed of the 
work of each school and institution, and to direct all who wish 
to know where and at what hour one may visit these schools. 

3. Committee on Pood Supply. The duties of this committee 
shall be to prepare a descriptive list of wholesale and retail 
foods, such as meat, vegetables, butter, eggs, etc. ; to compare 
New York and Chicago with other markets, and furnish state- 
ments of what articles of food are most desirable to buy, either 
in large or small quantities, with household recipes for cooking 
and all other matters relating to household economics. 

4. Committee on Housekeepers' Clubs. The duties of this 
committee shall be to formulate plans to simplify housework in 
village communities, to suggest plans for co-operation in laun- 
dries, bakeries, and kitchens, to discuss plans for profitable 



Appendix. , 273 

market gardening, poultry- and egg-raising on a small scale, and 
to furnish information on all topics connected with housework. 

5. Committee on Sewing. The duties of this committee shall 
be to keep itself informed of the work done in various schools 
where sewing is taught, and give outlines of the methods used. 

6. Press Committee. It shall be the duty of this committee 
to secure the publication of notes concerning the National 
Household Economic Association in some journal or periodical 
in the North, South, East, West, and Middle sections of the 
country, in order to keep alive public interest in the science 
of household economics ; each member of the committee tak- 
ing charge of the matter in her own section. 

7. All women may become members of this Association by 
the payment of an annual fee of one dollar. 

8. These by-laws may be amended at any annual meeting by 
a two-thirds vote of the members present, such amendment 
having been included in the call for the annual meeting. 

9. The deliberations of all the meetings of this Association 
shall be governed by " Roberts' Rules of Order." 



FORM FOR ANY HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC SOCIETY. 

THE CHICAGO HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC SOCIETY. 

Among the hopeful signs of progress now before us, none is 
more encouraging than our rapid development along the lines 
of household economics. Those intricate and valuable services 
performed in the home are no longer left unquestioningly to 
untrained hands and untaught heads. 

We have come to see that this work is not merely " service," 
but is an art, a science, a craft, a business, and a profession. 
Schools, colleges, and universities are taking up this line of 
study and following it with new enthusiasm. Clubs and societies 
are adding this subject to their lists, and the field of practical 
illustration is being rapidly filled both at home and abroad. 

The cooking-school in great cities shows the personal initia- 
tive finding expression, and the cooking-classes added to the 



2 74 Appendix, 

public school curriculum proyes the general recognition of the 
value of this study. 

lectures, articles, essays, and stories in magazines and papers 
indicate the increasing interest of the public in this new science 
of which we are just beginning to appreciate the scope. 

The master of household economics must understand all that 
pertains to the immediate surroundings of human life and its 
maintenance, building, furnishing, and decoration, sanitary 
engineering, hygiene, physiology, and chemistry ; with labora- 
tory analysis of foods and their adulteration, even to floriculture 
and landscape gardening. And this is not touching upon the 
professional side, the skill in methods of cleaning and in the 
mighty art of preparing food. 

Departments of household economics are now added to the 
Wisconsin State University at Madison ; the Iceland Stanford, 
Jr., University in California, and the University of Chicago, 
and many ethers are contemplating such an addition to their 
course. 

The Boston Institute of Technology has a very complete 
course on this subject ; the People's Institute, Pratt, Drexel, 
and Armour, have special departments for its study, and the 
public schools of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, San Fran- 
cisco, and other cities are introducing manual training in this 
line with marked success. 

The Michigan State Federation of Women's Clubs has adopted 
Household Economics as the subject of its year's work, and the 
General Federation of Women's Clubs of America has sent out 
a programme of similar work and recommended it to its vast 
constituency. 

The admirable work of Mrs. Fischelle in St. Louis is bring- 
ing the new thought within reach of the poor, and the wide- 
spread " kitchen gardens" carry on in one detail what the all- 
embracing kindergarten begins. 

In Vienna and Berlin time has proven the business success as 
well as hygienic value of numerous flourishing people's kitch- 
ens ; in London the South Kensington school has its effect in 
this field of life ; in Paris full training is provided in the schools 
for this work, though with the French the social sense is so 
highly developed that household economics have long since 



Appendix. • 275 

become an art as well as a science. In Boston we have the 
finest and fullest exhibition of progress in this line on this side 
of the water, with its thoroughly established New England 
Kitchen, its industrial unions, its furnishing of lunch to the 
public schools, etc. In Syracuse much fine, practical work is 
being done, especially on the question of trained service. In 
New York, Washington, and Philadelphia are diet kitchens 
where medical cookery is furnished, and in our leading medical 
colleges a course in such cookery is provided, not only for nurses 
but for physicians, and now Chicago is organizing an earnest 
effort to put into practical effect some of the new knowledge 
on this great theme. 

What the National Household Economic Association, under 
the far-reaching and energetic leadership af Mrs. John Wilkin- 
son, has so well initiated in the nation at large it is now hoped 
to develop into local expression in this city. 

Chicago has never been backward in recognizing the impor- 
tant movements in the world and is easily able to take the 
leadership in this great field. Dean Marion Talbot of Chicago 
University, one of the most admirably trained women in the 
country, is doing work which should easily hold her college in 
the front rank in this department. Armour Institute is so alive 
to the importance of the movement that it has supplemented 
its regular work under the able management of Miss Bullard 
by the most liberal offers of its large advantages in hall, class- 
room, and laboratory to the work now undertaken by the Chi- 
cago H. E. Society. The work proposed by this association 
for the present is as follows : 

To establish at least one training class for household service, 
with careful examination of applicants claiming to have had 
training, and giving certificates as to grade in skill and experi- 
ence. To form a housekeeper's alliance which shall agree, as 
far as possible, to engage the graduates of the special training 
class ; to establish a central office with a secretary, with bureau 
of information, registration, etc., etc., furnishing full biblio- 
graphy, lists of teachers, speakers, and the like. 

This is an immediate beginning, the entering wedge of much 
larger work. It should result in time in a great central build- 
ing giving full accommodation to all departments of the work ; 



276 Appendix. 

where every principle and detail of household economics will 
be taught with full training on the technical side ; where a com- 
plete registration department will bring employer and employe 
together on a reliable basis, and where the newest thought and 
material progress in this field of life will continually be given to 
the public. 

In every poor quarter of the city, people's kitchen buildings 
should demonstrate the value of the new methods and bring 
into immediate reach of every home this invaluable instruction. 

Even from the narrowest point of view it means a great im- 
provement in the convenience of living among the rich and a 
still greater uplift into the ease, health, and beauty of life among 
the poor. In this work we ask the interest and co-operation of 
every intelligent citizen. 

The Chicago Household Economic Society, 
Eei,En F. Marshai,!,, Sec'y. 



CONSTITUTION 

OF THE 

CHICAGO HOUSEHOLD ECONOMIC SOCIETY. 

ARTICLE I. — NAME. 

The name of this association shall be the Chicago House- 
hold Economic society. 

articee 11. — OBJECT. 

The object of this society shall be to establish in Chicago a 
practical expression of the purposes outlined in the articles of 
incorporation of the National Household Economic Association. 

ARTICLE III. — OFFICERS. 

Sec. I. The officers of this society shall be a president, vice- 
president, recording secretary, corresponding secretary, and 
treasurer. 



Appendix. . 2 7 7 

Sec. 2. An executive committee shall be appointed consist- 
ing of five members, of which the president of the society shall 
be chairman, to have charge of the affairs of the society. 

ARTICLE IV. — MEMBERSHIP. 

Any resident of Chicago or vicinity interested in our object 
and willing to further it is eligible to membership in this society. 

ARTICLE V. — MEETINGS. 

Sec. 1. Business meetings of this society shall be held quar- 
terly, the first to be on the first Thursday in December, 1895, 
and to constitute the beginning of the fiscal year. 

Sec. 2. Public meetings shall be held as deemed advisable 
by the executive committee. 

ARTICLE VI. — DUES. 

The annual dues of this society shall be $2 ; associate mem- 
bers, $5, and life members, $50. 

ARTICLE VII. — AMENDMENTS. 

This constitution may be amended by a two-thirds vote of 
those present and voting at an annual meeting, such amendment 
having been submitted in writing at the quarterly meeting next 
previous. 



INDEX. 



Abel, Mrs. Mary Hinman, xvii., 2, 158 

Adulteration, 185 

Agricultural and social interrelation, 154 ; and food supply, 215 

Air, need of, 62 ; night, 47, 64, 67 

Anthropology, help of, 15 

Applied art, 56 ; a home art, 41 

Architecture, and house, 6 ; domestic, 42, 52 ; limitations of, 

57 ; American, 55 ; Greek, 44 ; forms of, 56 
Aristotle, statement of, 3 
Art, decorative, 80 ; among savages, 90 ; relation of decorative 

to pictorial, 89 ; development of, 92 ; national, 96 ; influence 

upon child, 96-8 ; public, 57 
Australia and domestic service, 226 



Bacteria, 198 ; culture of, 199 

Bath, 75 

Beauty, 103 ; sense of in women, 94 ; bases of, 109 

Bedroom, place in house, 28 

Bibliography, 39, 59, 84, 104, 126 

Bread, per cent, of, 13 

Breathing, habits of, 62 



Camps, lumber, 65 
Carbohydrates, 169 



C 



279 



280 Index. 

Carpenter, Edward, 207 

Carroll, Lewis, 58 

Cat, domestic, 16 

Cellar, drainage of, 78 

Cellars, old-fashioned, 200 ; Philadelphia rules for, 202 

Cells, specializing, 153 

Cesspool, 80 

Chair, development of, 116 

Chambers, Dr., 163 

Chemistry of foods, lectures on, 260-267 

Child, the, food of, 184 

Children, their lives, 58 ; influence of home surroundings 
upon, 97, 121 

Cistern, 78, 79 

City against country, 35-38 

Civilization, central fact of, 4 ; retardation of, 11, 36 

Cleaning, antiseptic methods in, 145, 188 ; and excretion, 189 ; 
ethics of, 205 

Club, Chicago Women's, 240 ; Peoria (111.) Woman's, 250 ; 
Worcester (Mass.) Woman's, 250 ; Woburn (Mass.) Woman's, 
250; Wellesley Hills (Mass.) Woman's, 250; Springfield 
(Mass.) Woman's, 250 ; Elgin (111.) Woman's, 250 ; St. Johns- 
bury (Vt.) Woman's, 251 ; Alden, Franklin, Mass., 252 ; New 
Century, Wilmington, Del. , 251 ; Cleveland Sorosis, 251 ; 
Wednesday, St. Louis, 251 ; Watertown (Mass.), 252 ; Canta- 
brigia (Mass.), 252 ; Colonia, Brooklyn, N. Y., 252 ; Arundel, 
Baltimore, 252 

Coal, soft, and its effects, 203 

Color in decoration, 80, 100-102 

Color sense, development of, 100 

Consumptives, 65 

Cookery, American, 144 ; chemistry of, 161, 174 ; rank of, 175 ; 
varied place of, 176 ; a trade, 176 ; a service, 176 ; a craft, 
177 ; a science, 177 ; time spent in, 176 ; definition of, 176 ; 
an art, 178 ; apparatus of, 180 ; methods in, 180 ; advance in, 
181 ; degradation of, 182 

Co-operation or combination, 243 

Court-House, New York, 67 

Creed, Scotchman's, xii 

Criminals, influence of food on, 164 



Index. 281 

D 

Decoration, its possibilities, 8 ; meaning of, 87, 98 ; develop- 
ment of, 88 ; among savages, 90 
Derby, Dr. George, 32, 76 
Design, 8 

Dietaries, students', 158 ; general, 183, 185 
Differentiation of industries, 132 
Dirt, the making of, 193 
Domestic service, arguments for, 222 
Drainage, importance of, 83 ; Philadelphia, 195 
Drummond, Ascent of Man, 3, 231 
Dusters, feather, 196 ; damp, 196 ; professional, 206 

E 

Electricity, for heating, 72 ; for lighting, 73 
Ellis, Havelock, 14 
Employments, divisions of, 15 

Evolution, of mothers, 3 ; of the home, 27 ; of decorative art, 
92 ; of furniture, 114 ; organic, 230 ; civic, 230 



Factory operatives, needs of, 170 

Family, the life of, 2 

Fats, 169, 171 

Feeding, 148 

Fischell, Mrs., work of, 274 

Flats, 53 

Flesh formers, 159 

Fluff, 200 

Food, elements of, 157, 168 ; division of, 157 ; and the kitchen, 
156 ; consumption of, per week, 170 ; amount required, 184 

Foundation, of house, 33 

Franklin, Benjamin, 64 

Furnace, 71 

Furnishing, laws of, 8 

Furniture, extensions of the body, 108 ; harmony of, 111 ; prin- 
ciples of selection, 113, 121 ; evolution of, 114 ; personality 
and, 120, 124 



282 Index, 

G 

Gannett, William, 7, 8 

Garbage, disposition of, in St. Paul, 201 

Gardening, landscape, 54 

Gas, for heating, 72 

Grahamites, 162 

Gray's, Asa, butterfly, 246 

Greek architecture, 44-47 

Green, Dr. MaryE., 253 

H 

Harmony in furniture, 112 

Haweis, Mrs. H. R., 50 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 143 

Health, relation of houses to, 46 ; of building site, 31 

Heat, habit of, 66 

Heating, and ventilation, 70 ; methods of, 71, 72 

Home, clogging of, 190 ; a stronger, 246 ; relation of, to life, 3 

House, relation of, to life, 20, 21 ; a growth, 25 ; and the State, 
128 ; effect of, on character, 24, 26, 29 ; the result of charac- 
ter, 29 ; the tenement, 26 ; industries, 132 ; differentiation of, 
27 ; and soul, unity of, 24, 30 ; site of, 31 ; heating and ven- 
tilation of, 68-72 ; foundation of, 33 ; oriental, 47 ; growth 
of, 54 ; the private, 56 ; definition of, 57, organization of, 60 

Household economics, statics and dynamics of, 2 ; connecting 
link, 2 ; definition of, 2 ; and life, 3 ; relation of, to social 
economics, 128 

Household, parent of the State, 3, 128 ; a living organism, 4; 
structure of, 5 ; functions of, 5 ; industries of, 132 ; labor of 
National, Economic Association, plan of, xx. ; Chicago 
Economic, 273 ; formation of, 145, 226 ; constitution of, 273 ; 
economics, club work in, 249 ; science, a course in, 253-257 ; 
a season's work in, 257-259 

Household science, an instinct, 6 

Housekeeper's weekly martyrdom, 243 

House-maid, 220 

Housewife, and servant, 220 

Humanity, organic relations of, 24 

Hydrocarbons, 169 



Index. . 283 



Industries, status of domestic, 10 ; household, 148 

Industry, development of, 130 ; effect of upon body and mind, 

133 ; sex in, 138 
Inns of Court, 67 
Institutes, People's, Pratt, Drexel, Armour, 274 



Jacques, Dr. William, 181 

K 

Kedzie, Mrs Nellie, work of, xvi 
Kingsford, Dr. Anna, 162 

Kitchen, place in the house, 28 ; German, 49 ; Rumford Leaf- 
lets, 175 ; electrical, 181 ; diet, 275 ; people's, 274 



Labor, division of, 17, 136 ; dignity of, 136 ; grades of and 
their effect on character, 134, 136 ; further differentiation of 
in household needed, 131 

Lamp, 74 

Larcom, Lucy, recollections of, 143 

Leslie, Mrs. Susan, recollections of, 143 

Life, civilized, 175 : two kinds of, 235 ; complications of, 242 

Light, office of, 7 

Line in decorative art, 89 

Living, problem of, 7 ; business of, 186 ; organized, 230 

Lunches, the children's, 183, 184 

M 

Mace, Jean, 7 

Mal-nutrifcion, results of, 164 

Mammalia, origin of name, 3 

Man, body of, 149 ; food, 154 ; modified by food, 155 ; and a 

living, 155 ; complexity of, 242 
Map, topographical, of cities needed, 31 ; microbes, 66 
Mason, O. E., xi., 15 
Master and servants, 218 
Maternity, protective, 3 



284 Index. 

Menus, Thackeray's in Pendennis, 179 
Morris, William, 93, 121 
Mothers, evolution of, 3, 138 

N 

National progress and art, 96, 104 
Noise, in houses, 53 

Nutrition, in household, 148 ; definition of, 149 ; function of, 
150 ; steps of, 150 

O 

Offices, intelligence, 225 

Order, 98 

Organism, definition of, 4 ; organisms, union of, 153 ; and 

food, 152, 213 ; internal of house, 61 
Organization, growth in power of, 9 
Oriental home, 47 ; art, 91 
Oxygen, 68 

P 

Parlor, floor in the house, 29 
Pater, Walter, 43 
Pepper, red, quality of, 160 
Personal rights m the house, 28 
Personification, mark of, 12 
Pines, balsam of, 65 
Planting, judicious, 54 
Plumbing, 76, 82 
Pooling of resources, 55 
Porter, Turkish, strength of, 175 
Prairie, possibilities of, 54 
Proteids, 158, 169, 170, 171, 173 

R 

Reformatory, Elmira, 164 

Richards, Mrs. Ellen H., xiv., 158, 134-85, 196, 244 

Richardson, Dr. B. W., 76 

S 

Salmon, Prof. Lucy, xvi., 221 

Sanitation, 75 ; problems of, 77, 80 

Sanitary Science, Club of Collegiate Alumnse, xv. 



Index. • 285 

Sargent, Dr., 164 

Servants, Mrs. Starrett on, xiv. ; orders of, 217 ; traits of, 218 

Service, household, 209 ; domestic, 209 ; question of, 210 ; defi- 
nition of, 210 ; tutelage in, 213 ; system of, 219 ; arguments 
for, 222 ; healthfulness of, 222 ; report on from Colorado 
Labor Bureau, 225 ; intelligence offices for, 255 ; standard 
wage in, 226 ; in Australia, 226 

Sewage, systems of, 76, 77 ; ignorance of, 195 

Sex, in industry, 138 

Slavery and service, 216, 218 

Smith, Dr. Edward, 170 

Smith, Prof. Mary Roberts, social science programme, xvii. 

Society, organic growth of, 129 ; and backward household in- 
dustries, 141 

Specialization, 136, 141 

State, highest duty of, 11 

Statues, composite, 164 

Stetson, Mrs. Charlotte P., xxi., 37, 141 

Sunbeam, motes in, 196 

Sunshine, importance of, 32, 73 



T 



Tadema-Alma, 50 

Talbot, Marion, 275 

Taste, hints on household, 50 

Teachers, salary of, 222 

Temperature for house, 71 

Tenement, 26 

Tenements, model, 52 

Tesla, 181 

Tomboydom, 63 

Trades for women, 241 

Troglodytes, 63 

Turner, Mrs. Eliza S. , 222 

Tyner, Paul, aid of, xxi. 



Utility and beauty, 100 
Utility in furniture, 113 



U 



286 Index. 

v 

Vegetarianism, 162 

Ventilation, 61 ; reasons for, 62 ; essentials of, 67 ; methods of, 

68-70 ; and heating, 70 
Viele, 31 
Villages, 207 

W 

Ward, Lester F., 14, 141, 235, 236 

Waring, Col. George, 79, 206 

Waste of structure, 190 ; twofold, 191 

Water, importance in house, 74-76 ; well, 79 ; and disease, 80 

Watson, Mrs. Kate, programme of, xx., 249 

Weissmann, 11 

Well, 79 

White, Alfred, 52 

Williams, Matthieu, 161 

Wisconsin, University of, xv. 

Women, college, xiv., 9 

Women, Federated Clubs of, xx. ; of faculty, 239 ; in clubs, 

241 ; in trades, 241 ; executive and administrative, 239 ; 

work, 9, 11 ; and intuition, 10 ; the modern, 15 ; offices of, 

18; " taste" in, 94, 120 ; influence on our national character, 

104 ; and household labor, 222 
Work, effect of on character, 134 ; elevation of, 138, a day's, 

definition of, 223 




BOOKS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD 



The Franco-American Cookery Book ; or, How 

to Live Well and Wisely Every Day in the Year. 
Contains 365 different bills of fare. By Felix J. 
Deli^e, ex-chef of the Manhattan and Union Clubs. 
7th edition, revised. Half leather, cloth sides, 
large 8°, $3.50. 

The completeness of this work may be understood 
when it is said that it comprises over 2000 receipts, in- 
cluding 53 salads, 150 sauces, 90 ways of serving chicken, 
100 methods of garnishing, 420 soups, etc. 

" Without doubt the best book of cookery ever issued from the 
American press." — Boston Globe. 

" M. Deliee's volume ought to have colporteurs, and it should be 
distributed by missionary gourmands through the whole length and 
breadth of the land for the benefit of the benighted." — N. Y. Times. 

Good Living, A Practical Cookery Book for Town 
and Country. By Sara Van Buren Brugiere. 
Revised edition 8°, $1.75. 
This book Gontains over 1300 receipts drawn from the 

highest authorities and many countries ; from France, 

Belgium, England, Holland, Denmark, Spain, Italy, 

Austria, Russia, as well as nearer home. 

"After a careful examination of this book, we can confidently 
recommend it as one of the most thorough, comprehensive cook- 
books that we have ever seen." — Boston Home "Journal. 

The Majestic Family Cook-Book. By Adolphe 
Gallier, Chef of the Hotel Majestic, New York. 
Containing 1300 selected receipts, simplified for the 
use of housekeepers ; also a few choice bills of fare. 
8vo, $2.50. 

Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Dinners. Sug- 
gested by M. E. N. 16 , gilt top, $1.25. 

" ' 366 Dinners!' is a dainty little volume in white and blue, which 
will doubtless be as useful to the hostess as its appearance would be 
attractive to the guests ; for it is not a cook-book in brown oil-cloth 
covers, to be relegated to the floury hands of the cook, but a calendar 
of menus to be kept off the drawing-room table only because early 
guests might look in it under the day of the month and discover 
what was to be given them." 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



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